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3oyhood Reminiscences 



Pictures of New England 
Life in the Olden Times 
in Williamstown . . . 



BY 



JUDGE KEYES DANFORTH 



NEW YORK 

GAZLAY BROTHERS 

1895 




WASHE S 



n' 



i 



COPYRIGHT 

KEYES DANFORTH 
1895 



PREFACE. 

When I commenced writing these Reminiscences 
it was not with any idea of publishing them. But 
the local editor of the North Adams Transcript, 
seeing the first article, solicited it for publication 
and I acquiesced ; and a number of the articles have 
been published in that paper. Some who read them 
asked me to have the articles republished in book 
form. They may interest some of the older persons 
who lived in Williamstown in those olden times and 
were familiar with the characters, homes, and people 
described. They may be of interest, also, to some 
of the graduates of the College. 



Keyes Danforth. 



Williamstown, Mass., 
June i, 1895, 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Buxton and its Early Settlers — A Typical Old-time 
House — Cider and Applejack — A Trip to the 
Carding Mill — How Families Were Clothed and 
Shod — The District School — Getting the Cows, 9 

CHAPTER II. 

What it Cost to Build a House— Some of the Old 
Houses and Old Families — Carrying Water and 
Taking Apples for Pay — Starting a Balky Horse 
— fames Waterman's Legacy — Blessing before 
Lunch, iS 

CHAPTER III. 

Old Homestead Now All Gone— Some Well Re- 
membered People of the Old Days — A Noted 
Horseback Rider and How He Fooled the Stu- 
dents — Ebenezer Pratt's Parish — A Remarkable 
Text, 24 



CHAPTER IV. 

A Farmer Who Attended School, Went into Busi- 
ness and Got Rich— What He Told His Boys 
When They Hunted for His Pots of Gold— How- 
Liquor was Obtained from a Temperance Store- 
keeper — A Memorable Quilting Party, . . 31 



CHAPTER V. 

An Old-fashioned Hired Man — Prince Jackson's 
Happy Life — Farm Crops the Principal Medium 
of Exchange — Few Money Lenders in Those 
Days — Social Equality — Husking and Paring Bees 
— Spelling Contests, 36 

CHAPTER VI. 

Something in the Line of Genealogy — The Dan- 
forth Family Old and Honored — Founded in this 
Country in 1634 — Interesting Fragments of the 
Family History — Important Positions Held by 
Various Members — Some Preached and Others 
Practised, 44 

CHAPTER VII. 

Another Chapter About Ancestors — The Danforth 
Family Came to Williamstown in 1775 — Joshua, 
the First Postmaster of Pittsfield, was Appointed 
by President Washington in 1794, .... 51 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Old Times and Modern Times Compared — Charac- 
teristics of Keyes Danforth, Born in 1778 — A 
Pack of Dogs and Their " Heavenly Music " — 
The Hunter and the Minister — Why One Boy 
Grew Larger than His Brothers, . . . . 57 

CHAPTER IX. 

Interesting Facts About the Danforth Family — East 
Mountain Land that was Bought Cheap and Be- 
came Valuable — Personal Characteristics of Some 
of the Boys — Public Honors that Came to Them 
— Tricks that George Played in School, . . 64 

CHAPTER X. 

More About the Danforth Family — Personal Pecu- 
liarities of Some of its Members — Success and 
Prominence Achieved by the Sons — The Daugh- 
ters Married Able Men — The Late Dr. H. L. 
Sabin — Coming Down to the Present Day, . 71 

CHAPTER XI. 

Some of the Old Houses and Their Occupants — In- 
teresting Characters of Former Days — A Burly 
Blacksmith who was Converted to Temperance 
and Religion — The Old Mansion House and Some 
of its Landlords — Various Facts from Memory's 
Store -house, 81 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Whitmans and Their Store — A Religious 
Woman and Her Colored Servant — Effect of 
Religious Teaching — The House Occupied by 
President Carter — How D. W. Sloane Happened 
to Go West— Few Men Now Like Mark and 
Albert Hopkins— Amasa Shattuck in Church, 92 

CHAPTER XIII. 

More About Some of the Old Houses and Those 
Who Occupied Them— The Place Where James 
Fisk, Father of the Late James Fisk, Jr., Used 
to Live — The Deacon Foote Place and How its 
Owner Came Back from California to Die There 
— Other Recollections, 102 

CHAPTER XIV. 

A Quick-tempered but a Good-hearted Man — An 
Old-time Graduation Incident : Roused from a 
Drunken Stupor to Deliver the Valedictory, a 
Student Makes a Brilliant Impromptu Effort — 
Eli Porter and His Peculiarities — A Student Who 
Knew Everybody, in 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Old Kellogg House — Mrs. Benjamin's Prayer- 
meetings — The Old White Meeting-house on the 
Hill — Commencement in the Olden Times — The 
Sabin Place — Glen Avenue, 119 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Old Places on South Street— The Hosford 
House — Drinking Flip and Telling Yarns — The 
Cummings and Peters Places — The Reverend 
Wells Gridley— "Potato Hill"— Martin I. Town- 
send's Long Walk and What Came of It — Mrs. 
William H. Seward— Stone Hill, .... 126 

CHAPTER XVII. 

A Few Pages from the History of the Starkweather 
Family — Mrs. Homer Bartlett and Mrs. John T. 
Hoffman — The Old Wolcott Place — Moody's 
Bridge — The Line House — The Famous Sand 
Springs, 135 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Water Street — Small Beer the Only Beverage — 
Some Old-time Adventists — A Leaf from the His- 
tory of Mrs. Bradley Martin — The Hubbell Place 
— Krigger Mill — Hopper Road — Steve. Bacon's 
Stories— The Townsend Family, .... 144 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The White Oaks — Some of its Noted Characters — 
An Original Hymn — The Buxton Prayer-meet- 
ings — Watching with the Sick — Bill Shattuck, 
Funeral Director — The Late William Pratt — A 
Temperance Sermon, 157 



CHAPTER XX. 

Main Street — How the Freshmen Hooked Geese — 
Hoxsey and the Guerillas — President Griffin — 
The College in the Forties — "Chip and Tree 
Days" — Students Then and Now — The Society 
Club Houses, 166 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The New Streets and When They Were Opened — 
Mission Park and the Haystack Monument — The 
New Summer Residences — Mount Pleasant — The 
Recent College Buildings — How the College 
Treasurer Used to Keep the Funds, . . . 174 






Boyhood Reminiscences 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



CHAPTER I. 

BUXTON AND ITS EARLY SETTLERS — A TYPICAL 
OLD-TIME HOUSE — CIDER AND APPLEJACK — A 
TRIP TO THE CARDING MILL — HOW FAMILIES 
WERE CLOTHED AND SHOD — THE DISTRICT 
SCHOOL — GETTING THE COWS. 

Buxton was a famous place to me in my boyhood 
days, being named for Buxton, of England, I pre- 
sume, for having many of its rugged qualities and the 
class of people who settled there. It is said to have 
been named Buxton by my grandmother. 

Many of the first settlers of the town located there. 
The Danforths, Bulkleys, Tallmages, Fords, Hoxeys, 
Kilborns and Youngs, settled on neighboring house 
lots, and most of them had large families. Most of 
their children were older than myself and I knew but 
little of them except from tradition. It was the world 
I lived in and the only one I knew in my young days, 
and the life and doings of these early days, in which 
I moved and participated, made a deep impression 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



upon my young mind, and are fresher in it than many 
things which have occurred within the last year. 

Being one of a large family, born in January, 1822, 
in a one-story house covering some less than one- 
half acre, situated on the extreme west house lot on 
Main Street, having seven rooms on the ground floor, 
with a chimney some eight feet square at the base, 
with a large brick oven which yielded at Thanks- 
giving time its wealth of brown bread, suet puddings, 
chicken pies, and other things too numerous to men- 
tion; having fire-places in these rooms, situated around 
the big chimney, the fire-place in the kitchen being 
live feet wide, into which we used to pile four-foot 
logs and wood for light and warmth in the long 
winter evenings, being occupied with many neighbor- 
ing men who came to talk over the news of the day 
and lay plans for the next political campaign (my father 
being a leading democrat), while I, a boy, made fre- 
quent excursions to the cellar to replenish the empty 
pitcher ; for those were days of much cider and apple- 
jack, but very little drunkenness from the use of the 
same. The women of the family occupied the sitting 
room with their mates, and the company indulged in 
their own domestic employment and neighborly gossip. 
During the day the men were engaged in the severe 
labor of the farm (as my father possessed many acres) 
and the mother and daughters took up their duties of 
the day, spinning, weaving, and other domestic work, 
10 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



as there were not any factories in those early days, 
though there was here and there a carding mill and 
cloth-dressing mill. 

I remember when a small boy driving my mother 
to the South part carding mill, located on the road to 
New Ashford, operated by William Johnson and 
Charles Butler, in the building afterward used by 
James A. Eldridge as a plane factory. We stayed 
all day, waiting for the rolls to be manufactured from 
the budget of wool which we brought to the mill. 
Meanwhile I played around the mill and my mother 
visited with Mrs. Johnson. When the rolls were 
brought home they had to be spun and made into 
cloth by the home-weaver, and stockings by the knitter, 
for the family use and wear, which kept the mother 
and daughters of the family busy. There were not 
any drones in those days ; they were days of toil and 
self-help, still people had their hours and days of 
recreation and pleasure. 

My big brothers had become full-fledged and left 
the old nest before I was old enough to remember 
much about them, but there lingered about the old 
home many of their doings and sayings. We had 
living with us a lame Swedish sailor called ' ' Broken- 
Back " Charley, who used to have a glass he carried 
around at commencement time and let the boys look 
through at a cent a peep, saying to them they could 
see the whole world in it. Charley used to cultivate 
ir 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the gardens, feed the pigs and do other light chores 
about the house. The upper part or chamber of the 
old house was in one room, the boards of the floor of 
which did not touch the big chimney, leaving some 
foot space between the floor and chimney as a pro- 
tection against fire, as there were not any fire insur- 
ance companies in those early days. This space made 
it a very convenient place for the mother cat to bring 
up her kittens ; the chamber door and kitchen door 
having scientific cat-holes cut in them for the ingress 
and egress of the feline occupants. This chamber 
was occupied by the weaving loom and quilting 
frames, and our lodging room for the boys and hired 
men. One of my brothers was quite a young wag, 
and ofttimes in the middle of the night would call out 
to old Charley, "What's the number of your room ?" 
and Charley would answer, "Sixteen." The old sailor's 
couch was near the quilting frames, and as soon as 
the light of day came into the room he would shake 
the quilting frames and hallo, " Boys, up, the early 
bird catches the worm." 

In my early boyhood I was permitted to run at 
large in the street and overbroad acres, playing "one 
old cat," and base ball, (no scientific games or balls 
hard as a white oak boulder in those days) except 
when pressed into service to ride the horse to plough 
out the corn and potatoes. This being somewhat 
monotonous and sleepy business, I would fall asleep 

12 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



astride of the sheepskin on the horse's back, leaving 
the horse to his own sweet will, when a sod hurled 
by the holder of the plow would take me in the back 
and cause sleep to depart. I also followed the mowers 
with my rake stale to spread the swathes of the new 
mown grass and bring the drink to the weary men 
who swung the scythes. I attended school two months 
in summer, and three months in winter. How well 
I remember those youthful days of fun and frolic far 
back in the past, while attending school in the little 
red school-house on the bank of the brook at the foot 
of the hill, taught in the summer time by charming 
young misses, and in winter by young men from the 
college. In those days the long winter vacation gave 
the students an opportunity to earn some few dollars 
to assist them in their college course, and most of our 
schools in town and neighboring towns w T ere taught 
by the students of the college the winter term, when 
the school-house was filled with large boys and girls 
of an interesting age, and oftentimes students who 
did not really need the small reward which the town 
dealt out to them for teaching, would take a school 
for the amount of fun they could get out of teaching 
and boarding around in the different families of the 
district, adorned with good, bright, healthy country 
girls, as the families of those days were large and the 
girls were beauties. The first female teacher I remem- 
ber was Miss Percy Bridges, afterwards Mrs. Henry 

13 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Seeley, and the first male teacher was Mason Noble, 
who was supplying our pulpit when the old church on 
the hill burned down. The little school-house also 
served the purpose of a Buxton Church, where Sun- 
day evening meetings were held by Anthony Sanders, 
with Justin Ford as chorister. Sometimes Professor 
Albert Hopkins would come up and take charge of 
the meetings, when the little house would be packed, 
with a narrow passage left him to reach his chair, 
when he would look around with those deep-set 
black eyes of his upon that little hive of human 
beings, and with the spirit of the Master upon him, 
would give us such a discourse as could come from 
none other than him, aroused by the wants of the little 
compact company around him. 

Santa Claus was very poor in those days, and the 
boys and girls did not find waiting for them in the 
early dawn of Christmas morning, sleds and skates 
for winter use. Each boy made his own sled. Not 
any rippers or double runners gladdened our eyes. 
The first skates I had, I made the woods and straps 
and fitted the same to an old pair of skate irons I 
purchased for six cents, and they were hard looking 
instruments to glide over the ice on, still the best I 
had or could procure under the circumstances. 

In the fall father would gather in from the tannery 
sides of upper leather and sole leather, as the farmers 
used to take the hides they took from the cattle and 

14 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



other beasts they killed to the tannery to be dressed 
and made into leather for family use, and old Rube 
Peters would be brought to the house with his bench 
and kit and shoe up the family for the winter cam- 
paign; and when the cloth was made ready, Nancy 
would come with her goose to make the boys' clothes. 
I would most always have to go to the last place she 
worked for the goose. Why it was called a goose I 
never knew. Nancy never carried any tape measure. 
(I presume there were none in those days.) She used 
to take the old Pittsfield Sun, (which was the only 
paper my father took in those days, and which he 
continued until his death) and cut into strips, and 
stitching the strips together, would measure me for 
trousers and coat, (didn't have vests,) commencing 
at bottom of leg up to knee, then double one over 
the strip and cut a notch and so on, as she turned a 
corner. The suit fitted all around and was roomy 
and good, and I felt good with my new suit of sheep's 
gray ; and when the seat and knees wore through, (as 
they will on a tearing boy) patches of the same cloth 
would be put on by the weary and loving mother, 
lighted by a tallow dip at night, while the tearing 
boy was asleep, to be ready for him when he awoke 
the next morning. The patches would not often 
match in color, as the long exposure of trousers to the 
elements would fade them much. Now and then a 
dressmaker would come in and fit out the girls with 

15 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



their go-to-meeting clothes, but their everyday clothes 
they fitted and made themselves. Those were days 
of self-help. There was work to do and it was done. 
In early spring my old winter shoes were laid 
aside, and I went barefoot till fall. Sometimes I 
was afflicted with a stone-bruise on my heel, and 
would be put to the inconvenience of going tip-toe, 
which is the sign of a good dancer. Many a time 
when I drove up the cows from the meadows in the 
early frosty mornings in the fall, I would start up 
the cows and stand and warm my feet on the bed of 
earth which the cows had warmed. During my early 
boyhood my father kept a dairy of some thirty cows, 
and it was my duty to go after the cows at night. 
The pasture was large, extending over the hills, 
interspersed with much forest and openings here 
and there and ending at the Prindle orchard. This 
orchard produced much choice fruit, and, knowing 
the location of the early and late fruit trees, I would 
leap over the fence and fill my pockets, boy-like, 
having no fear of that kind of pilfering or idea it was 
wrong to pocket a few apples from a large orchard. 
This orchard was set out by the Prindle brothers 
many years before, about a mile from their house on 
the eastern boundary of their farm, and it was always 
a mystery to me why they located such a fine fruit 
orchard so far from their dwelling. I presume it was 
to get a southern exposure, and on land least valuable 
16 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



for farming purposes. William B. Sherman and 
Robins Bulkley set orchards at the same time, but 
near their dwellings. These old orchards have mostly 
disappeared, but now and then an old trunk remains. 
The Sherman orchard was the boy rogue's pilfering 
ground, and the hired men from the various farms 
used to make the mow of fresh mown hay redolent 
with the fragrance of early harvest apples therein 
concealed. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT IT COST TO BUILD A HOUSE — SOME OF THE 
OLD HOUSES AND OLD FAMILIES — CARRYING 
WATER AND TAKING APPLES FOR PAY — START- 
ING A BALKY HORSE — JAMES WATERMAN'S 
LEGACY — THE BLESSING BEFORE LUNCH. 

In the year 1835, my father built a new house on 
one of the house lots north of Main Street, the family 
having outgrown the old resting place. He contracted 
with a man by the name of Atwood to build the same, 
price $300 and board of himself and workmen, taking 
the framing timbers in the rough, hew and frame the 
same, make all the doors and window sash (as there 
were not any sash and door factories at that time) 
and finish the house outside and in as to wood work, 
my father furnishing the material. Atwood employed 
some four men, their wages being seventy-five cents 
per day, and they worked from dawn to dark. The 
rest of the evening they spent in the street sitting on 
the logs telling stories, of which the boss had a fund, 
and it was great fun for me, a boy, to listen to them. 

That fall we abandoned the old house as a home 

and settled in the new, and the old house with part 

of the farm was rented, and, not being kept in proper 

repair, it became much run down, and at my father's 

18 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



death, when it came into my hands, thinking it would 
be expensive to repair the old home, and having to 
practice economy in those days, I concluded it would 
be more economical to move the house out by the 
barn for a storehouse and erect a new front, which 
I did some years ago the barn took fire and the 
old house went up in flames and smoke, and the 
shelter of my early boyhood was no more. 

How many times in these days of romance and love 
of old places and things, have I regretted not repair- 
ing the old house and allowing it to stand on its old 
foundations, a monument to these olden times, as it 
must have been among the oldest houses in town, as 
this was a portion of the town first settled, judging 
from peculiar architecture of the houses built in that 
part of the town. One stood on the knoll on the west 
side of the road nearly opposite the new Buxton 
school-house, in which Thomas F. Hoxsey lived 
when he came to town, and until he built the house 
on the hill now occupied by L. C. Torrey. The first 
family I remember occupying this house was John 
Pettit's. Mrs. Pettit was a woman of odd speech 
and full of fun, and I used to go there to hear her 
talk, and hunt eggs in the old half-underground 
kitchen, which, having been abandoned as a living 
room, was occupied by the hens laying the luck eggs. 
Afterwards Reuben Peters occupied it. I used to go 
there to get my shoes mended. He had a son we used 

19 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



to call " Buck " Peters, who played the drum, and I 
have marched with other boys more than a thousand 
miles, all told, after "Buck" and his drum, moon- 
light evenings. There were four more such houses 
as my old home in the neighborhood. But one is now 
standing, known as the Wheldon house. They must 
have been built before or soon after the Revolution, as 
my grandfather purchased the farm with the build- 
ings thereon in 1800, and he lived on the farm some 
years before. The period before this was of different 
architecture, being one story, narrow and long, door 
in the centre, opening into an entry- way with rooms 
each side. They were called regulation houses. 
There were five in Buxton district, now all gone. One 
stood where the wing of my farm-house stands. In 
my boyhood it was occupied by old Mrs. Taylor, 
who colored ribbons and cloth for the girls. She had 
two boys older than myself, and I found very con- 
venient to spend some of my evenings there, and I 
have brought many a pail of water for her from the 
spring under the hill, and received a large red apple 
from her in pay. The trunk of the old apple tree 
stands on the bank now. One house stood on the 
south side of Main Street at the brow of the little 
hill. Another was the old Kilborn house on the 
bank of Hemlock brook, since remodeled by Barney 
Manion. Another stood on the north side of the road 
in Charity ville on the west side of the brook, owned 
20 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and occupied in early days by Rube Peters, pur- 
chased by the late Ned Reagen, and he, fearing the 
brook when on a rampage might carry him off, 
moved it west and set up and remodeled it. The 
other was the old Younger house, which stood on the 
hill just west of where the Tom Bridgeman home 
now stands. Another little old house which has dis- 
appeared stood near, and east of the Root house on a 
clay bank where the road to Pownal runs. It was 
occupied by Major Hawley, a little, white haired old 
man, who walked with a cane, with his little fingers 
sticking out. He was an English soldier of the war 
of 1 8 12, who deserted while on their way through 
the county at the close of the war. Another of the 
deserters, Hugh Cain, stopped in Williamstown. 
He at one time in my younger days occupied a part 
of our old homestead. He was the father of William 
Cain, called " Bill " Cain. The house on the Rocks, 
in Main Street, at one time was occupied by a family 
by name of Swan. Mrs. Swan was a tall, black-eyed 
woman, with some beautiful black-eyed daughters, 
(my mother said.) One of these daughters was the 
mother of B. F. Mather, who, at his death, was the 
oldest merchant of Berkshire county. 

Bissill Sherman had quite an orchard on his land 
south of this house, and Bradock Meech used to trim 
the orchard for wood and limbs. One day Bradock 
had his one-horse lumber wagon loaded with limbs, 

21 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and himself on top of the load, when his horse re- 
fused to draw. I, a boy, happening along, tried to 
start the horse, but no go. Finally I said to the old 
man that I had been told that if you would put a 
chestnut burr under a balky horse's tail he would 
draw. He said : " Dum him, try him." There being 
a little chestnut tree close at hand, I picked a burr 
and, raising the old horse's tail, I put the burr under. 
The old horse clapped down his tail and started upon 
a run, and I started on the run for home, looking 
around to see how the running horse was making it. 
I saw Bradock going one way and the brush the 
other, and the horse making his 2.40, but he was 
stopped and no damage was done. 

Some twelve years ago when James Waterman ran 
the stage and express to and from the depot, one 
winter day I boarded his sleigh at the depot to ride 
up to the village, when I spied in the sleigh a two- 
gallon jug which had come from Troy by express, 
and a tag hanging from the handle with Bradock 
Meech'sname. I said to Jim, "Howisthis; Bradock 
has been dead more than forty years ? " His answer 
was : " I used to court his daughter Lucy when a 
boy, and this is my legacy." 

In 1834, Col. William Waterman and my father 

took a contract of the town to rebuild the Noble 

bridge, which the floods had taken off that spring. 

It stood where the iron bridge now stands, near the 

22 



I 

Boyhood Reminiscences. 



depot, and all the boys and hired men of the two 
families worked on the bridge in the autumn and 
one had plenty of work and fun. Jim and I would 
start just before lunch-time across the Cole pasture, 
through thistle beds up to our waists, barefoot, into 
the backpath of Dr. Samuel Smith's orchard, fill 
our pockets with nice ripe apples, and return. When 
ready to sit down to our lunch, if our fathers were 
not present, Jim would ask one of Deacon James 
Young's blessings and we would fall to. 



CHAPTER III. 

OLD HOMESTEAD NOW ALL GONE — SOME WELL 
REMEMBERED PEOPLE OF THE OLD DAYS — A 
NOTED HORSEBACK RIDER AND HOW HE FOOLED 
THE STUDENTS — EBENEZER PRATT'S PARISH — 
A REMARKABLE TEXT. 

Robins Bulkley, the father of the late Judge John 
Bulkley, owned and lived on farm where the late 
Roswell Meacham lived. His family consisted of two 
boys and a number of beautiful girls, who in their 
young days made their home a pleasant resort for the 
young people of the neighborhood and village. The 
next house west, now the house of Col. A. L. Hopkins' 
farmer, known as the Josiah Tallmage farm, was 
the home of Mrs. Jeremiah H. Hosford in her young 
days, and was occupied in my very early boyhood by 
Anthony Sanders, who kept the town-poor, and 
whose family I will speak of later. Justin Ford 
lived in the next house west, owned and occupied by 
his father, Deacon Ford, before him, and since re- 
modeled by Col. Hopkins, and occupied as his Bux- 
ton home. I have a good reason for remembering 
this old house, for when very young the boys of the 
neighborhood were playing about the house one 
moonlight night and we had a race from the house 

24 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



below up to the Ford house. Being tired, I sat down 
on a log, when one of the boys took up the ax and 
struck the log, and the ax glanced and split my ear 
open. We were frightened at the flow of blood. 
They took me into the kitchen of the house, and 
there being a company of young people there that 
evening, they poured out of the parlor into the 
kitchen, and it so happened that one of my older 
brothers was of the company. He took me home and 
placed me astride of a horse behind him and landed 
me in Dr. Emmons* office, who took a couple of 
stitches in my ear and put on some sticking plaster 
and sent me home. I still carry the mark. The most 
immediate advantage it proved to me was the school- 
teacher dared not box my ears for some months. 

Amasa Bridges' house stood across the ravine on a 
little knoll just north of Hopkins' reservoir. His 
family consisted of bright, witty daughters, two of 
whom were my teachers in the little Buxton school- 
house at different times. Ann, the younger, was a 
fountain of wit and fun, good company and welcomed 
into every family in the neighborhood. I think she 
is still living in Ohio. She was here a few years ago 
visiting her sister, Mrs. Knowlton. I took her on a 
drive up round the scenes of her early childhood, but 
she was very quiet. All fun had departed from her, 
forced out by the hardships of life or by the thoughts 
of the destruction of her early home, as the house 

25 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and all were gone. Even the old blacksmith shop 
which stood on the opposite side of the road, where 
I had been many a time to get my father's horses 
shod , was gone also. 

The next house as you go up Northwest hill in my 
very early boyhood was owned and occupied by old 
Nathaniel Chamberlin, the father of Ralph and 
Emory Chamberlin, and grandfather of the late 
Nathaniel Chamberlin, who for many years owned 
and occupied this place. Tradition says the old 
Nathaniel was a noted horseback rider, and had a 
white horse he had educated to take short gallops and 
stop suddenly. The street walk used to pass through 
the center of old West College, with doors that closed 
each side. Old Nat was around the college one day 
on his white horse when some of the students bet him 
a sum of money that he couldn't ride his horse 
through the college. They had placed a student at 
the farther door to close it and trap the old man and 
horse when well in. The old gent smelt a rat and 
would start his horse on the gallop for the door and 
would stop suddenly at the steps. After doing this 
several times, throwing the boys off their guard, he 
started the old gray horse and went through the 
building so quickly that the boys could not close the 
doors and trap him. 

The next house as you go up the hill was owned 
and occupied by Jacob Brown, (known as "By 
26 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Jolly.") He was a very early riser, but Lucinda, his 
wife, did not relish early rising, preferring sleep. 
When "By Jolly" used to call out, "Lucinda, do 
get up," she would answer, " Brown, I shall get up 
when I get ready," and Brown would answer, "Dare 
say you will." Brown was subject to fits of depres- 
sion. One morning he got up at three o'clock and 
said "Lucinda, I've got a rope and I'm going to the 
barn to hang myself." Lucinda replied, "Brown, if 
you want any help, call on me," then turned over in 
her bed and took another nap, having heard this 
threat so often that it made no impression upon 
her. 

The next house and farm was Thomas Carpenter's, 
and out in the lot north was a house once occupied by 
Bailey. This house has disappeared. 

To the north, down the road towards Pownal, now 
discontinued, lived Asa Russell, who had two beauti- 
ful black-eyed daughters. One of them became the 
wife of Sanford Blackinton, and was the mother of 
William Blackinton and his sister, Mrs. Pomeroy. 
The other married John Mills of South Williams- 
town, and in her widowhood lived with her two 
daughters in a little house on Main Street, east of The 
Greylock, owned by the Bullock estate. Though he 
lived over the line in Pownal the family attended 
church in Williamstown. Further up on the hill was 
the house and farm of Emory Chamberlin, who had 

27 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



a large family. The girls were bright and handsome. 
The eldest, Mary, taught the Buxton school in my 
boyhood days. She was a beautiful girl, was greatly 
admired by Judge Bulkley in his young days, but she 
married his cousin, A. Bulkley, went west and died 
young. After Chamberlin moved into the village 
some of the younger girls of the family, with their 
brothers, used to carry on the farm on the hill, and 
we young people used to have a jolly time at their 
hill home. A little further on lived Ralph Chamber- 
lin, brother of Emory. He had a large family, who 
were scattered after his death. Just west of this house 
stands the oldest school-house in town, and it is the 
only old original school-house now standing, the 
exterior of which has never been changed. My elder 
brothers used to attend school in this little house when 
boys, there being no school-house in Buxton then. 
Anthony Sanders taught school in this house some 
seventy-four years ago, when he first came from 
Rhode Island. 

At the foot of West Mountain is an old cellar 
hole where in my day stood an old house which was 
said to have been occupied in the early period of the 
settlement of that part of the town by old Mr. Marks. 
As you journey on down the west road to the 
Pownal line, you find a house on the east side of the 
road which was many years ago occupied by old 
Mr. Bixby, who had a family of two sons and two 
28 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



daughters. The daughters married graduates of the 
college and are both dead. Warren Bixby of North 
Adams is one of the sons. 

On the opposite side of the highway lived Samuel 
Tyler, having a family of one son and five daughters, 
all pretty, bright, accomplished girls. The eldest 
married B. F. Mather, and became the mother of 
many bright children. The next daughter, Jannie, 
married S. Safford of Philadelphia, who died a few 
years after their marriage, and left her with two little 
boys. She was in my family much, being a very 
intimate friend of my wife, Anna, and I saw much 
of her. She was very handsome, and I think she had 
the most beautiful and unselfish character of any 
woman I ever knew. One of her sons died in early 
manhood ; the other is Arthur Safford of Adams 

Eli Tyler, the brother of Samuel, lived a little north 
of his brother on a small farm. He was a feeble man, 
raised a large family and died in the old home. The 
family are all dead, and the house is gone Journey 
west and we come to Moon Hollow, where lived old 
Jacob Moon, from whom all the Williamstown Moons 
descended In this neighborhood was the preaching 
parish of Ebenezer Pratt, father of the orator, Bill 
Pratt, when he first came to town. In one of his 
sermons he announced to his hearers that they would 
find his text in the ' ' Twoth verse of the twoth chapter 
of Regular Frastees," and at the close of the meeting 
29 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



he gave out notice that ' ' there would be a meeting in 
that place one week from that night if the Lord was 
willing, and in two weeks whither or no." Most of 
the people of the Northwest hill were regular church- 
goers, and the string of wagons coming down the 
hill Sunday morning resembled a Catholic funeral 
procession in length. 

On my father's mountain farm was a house occupied 
at one time by Iliram Richards. His wife and mother 
had a tea-party of the women of the neighborhood, 
but did not invite Hiram to take tea with them. 
Hiram sat in the other room, moody and cross at the 
slight to him, and coming to the conclusion that there 
was no help for him, with a loud voice said : " I wish 
the Almighty would come into that room and split 
that table from rim to rim, so there by ! " 

Further up on the very top of the mountain, just on 
the Massachusetts line, lived old Mr. Bailey, who had 
one son named Tyler Bailey, who cultivated all the 
land he wished on the Van Rensselaer patent without 
money or price. Further south, on the same ridge 
many years ago lived to a good old age, James Smith, 
claiming all the mountain top, but died owning none. 
All these houses are gone and nothing but the holes 
in the earth and a few stones remain to show the 
chance traveller where they stood. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A FARMER WHO ATTENDED SCHOOL, WENT INTO 
BUSINESS AND GOT RICH — WHAT HE TOLD HIS 
BOYS WHEN THEY HUNTED FOR HIS POTS OF 
GOLD — HOW LIQUOR WAS OBTAINED FROM A 
TEMPERANCE STORE- KEEPER — A MEMORABLE 
QUILTING PARTY. 

Further west towards Petersburgh Mountain, Wil- 
liam B. Sherman, a man of strong will and good 
mind, located on what is known as the " red house " 
farm, living in a leg house with his wife under the 
hill south of the present house. He attended school 
in the winter season, where he learned to read, write 
and figure, cultivating his farm in pleasant weather 
and making baskets rainy days. He built the red 
house now occupied by Newel Torrey. Soon after- 
ward he moved into the village and went into mercan- 
tile business and made much money, which he invested 
in real estate. He became a large land owner and a 
man of much wealth, but most of his sons became 
dissipated, worthless men. He had a farm for every 
son, and put his sons on them, but they made poor 
farmers. In their younger days the old man dis- 
covered his sons digging in his garden. He asked 
them what they were after and they said, " We are 
trying to find your pots of buried gold. " " Good God, 

3i 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



boys, " he said, ' ' keep digging about eight inches deep 
all your lives and you will find them," but they did not 
follow his advice, and never found any gold. In his 
change of business he accumulated wealth, to the 
detriment of most of his sons. 

The first person I remember occupying the place 
was Thomas Stewart, who married the daughter of 
Solomon Prindle. He died there, and after his death 
his family was scattered. Asa Russell occupied it 
afterward with his large family, and Ray Jones lived 
there. 

The next house up through the woods was occupied 
by Sackney Smedley. Then comes the house now 
owned by Dennis Donahue. In my young days it 
was owned by the Whitmans, and occupied by Elijah 
Lamb. Samuel Fowler, a young man of genius and 
wit, worked for him. The Whitmans in the early 
days of trade sold liquor, but when the temperance 
question began to be agitated they stopped. The 
question being discussed on the hill, Sam bet Lamb 
a dollar he could get some liquor at the store. He 
mounted a horse with a jug and started him on the 
run, throwing off his coat, vest and hat on the way, 
and brought up before the store in his shirt sleeves 
and hatless, and wanted some liquor quick, saying, 
" Lamb has got injured." They got him the liquor, he 
took a drink, bid them good day and started for the 
hill, having won the bet and got a drink. 

32 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



The Whitmans sold this farm to Albert Williams, 
whose wife was the daughter of David Foster. In 
my youth, when the Williamstown Academy was 
flourishing, many of the young people attended, Wil- 
liams' daughter among them. She invited the girls 
of the school to come up to her home to a quilting a 
certain afternoon, and the girls invited the boys to 
accompany them. We all concluded to cut school and 
go. Waterman had a horse and buggy for the use of 
himself and sister between school and their Bee Hill 
home, and John took into his buggy three girls and 
started for the quilting. The rest of the girls and 
boys marched to Birch Hill. I, with James Hosford, 
went across lots to avoid going by my house. When 
we reached the house we found all the neighbors 
there quilting. The daughter had not told her mother 
she had invited the girls to come up. We took pos- 
session of the upper room and made things lively. 
When our girls got a chance to do service on the 
quilt the boys continued their circus in the upper 
room. James W. walked like Aaron Ballou and 
looked for the eagle. Mrs. Williams would come up 
when we became too noisy and box our ears. The 
girls were treated to supper, but the boys were turned 
away empty, which served them right, as they were 
not invited and had no business there. About dusk 
we commenced our journey homeward. Waterman, 
Hosford and myself had each a jolly girl for company, 

33 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and we had a pleasant, never-to-be-forgotten stroll 
home with them. Many times I have thought of 
that truant excursion. The three young (now old) 
men are still alive. The girls were all married in 
time, but none of them to these men. 

North of this house and in the lot lived Orin 
Welch with a large family, some of whom would 
most always be sick in the winter and the young 
folks of the district would have to go up and watch 
with them. Sanders and I were called one cold 
winter night to watch with one of the sick boys. 
We took with us a lunch, doughnuts and mince pie, 
and left them out-doors, as the boy was sick with 
consumption and there was a bed-ridden daughter in 
the room of the watchers. All the family would sit 
up till midnight. The old woman took snuff, walked 
the floor, drew the snuff across her upper lip, which 
had some length of beard, and murmured : ' 4 Elijah 
sick, Maria is bed-ridden and Orin expects to be 
confined in February." It was a bitter cold night, 
the wind howled and the snow flew around the house. 
We found our lunch frozen and buried in the snow 
when we went for it and were under the necessity of 
fasting till morning. 

Further on was a house known as the Porter 
place, now owned by Dennis Donahue. Further 
west was a house and sixty-acre lot owned and occu- 
pied by Bovee, and to this day it is known as the 

34 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Bovee lot. Mrs. Bovee was an ardent, excitable 
Methodist. They used to hold meetings at her house, 
when she would get so wrought up she would kiss 
the brethren and pronounce them holy kisses, which 
confirmed old Squire Bartlett's opinion. After at- 
tending a meeting in the hall over Sherman's store 
some years ago, when Skeels McMaster hopped 
around the room on hands and knees talking to the 
Lord, being asked what he thought about it said, 
" They were a great deal like buckwheat cakes, best 
when warm." Mrs. Bovee so infatuated one of the 
brethren with those kisses that he eloped with her. 
All three of these last mentioned houses are gone. 
All were occupied in the olden times by tillers of 
the soil. 

Further up the Petersburgh road lived John and 
Solomon Prindle. Many years ago they sold their 
farm and started west with ox teams, before the age 
of railroads. Becoming homesick for the hills of 
Berkshire, the old farm and the young orchard they 
had planted there, they returned and purchased the 
old place back and lived there the remainder of their 
lives and partook of the fruits of the orchard they 
planted. Many of the descendants of John live 
here. The old house burned down some years ago 
and has been lately replaced by a new one by George 
Brookman, who owns the place. 



CHAPTER V. 

AN OLD-FASHIONED HIRED MAN — PRINCE JACK- 
SON'S HArPY LIFE — FARM CROPS THE PRINCIPAL 
MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE — FEW MONEY LENDERS 
IN THOSE DAYS — SOCIAL EQUALITY — HUSKING 
AND PARING BEES — SPELLING CONTESTS. 

There lived at one time in my father's house on 
the hill, Johnson Holmes, who had two dogs, which 
were my boyish admiration. I would go up the hill 
as far as the house and sit on a stump and send the 
dogs after the cows, and they would bring them down 
to me, which was a great saving of footwear. 
Holmes died many years ago, but his wife, Phebe, 
lived to a good old age, and spent her latter days in 
an old house which stood on land owned now by 
Dr. John H. Denison, near where his coachman's 
house now stands. William Hurley, a tall, spare 
man, lived in one of the houses on the mountain, 
and after a hard day's work would help milk the 
cows, eat supper, and about eight o'clock in the 
evening would take half a bushel of meal on his 
back and start for his mountain home, and would be 
back by six o'clock the next morning ready for work. 

Prince Jackson, who was a freed New York State 
slave, occupied for many years with his wife, Electa, 
the house on the hill side in Flora's Glen, raised his 
36 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



com and potatoes and other vegetables, fatted his pig-, 
drank the purest spring water that gushed out of the 
hill-side, and New England rum flavored with lemon 
peel, and lived to the good old age of over eighty 
years. They used to have darkey dances and enjoyed 
life to its fullest extent. To listen to the old darkey's 
laugh was a joy forever. 

The farmers in those early days had to build 
houses on their land for the laborers. My father 
had six on his land, two on his West Mountain land, 
two on the hill of the home farm, one where the barn 
now stands, and one on the sunny side of Flora's 
Glen, in those days called Malady Hollow, named 
for an old Scotchman who lived at the head of the 
Glen. He also had two houses on Main Street. 
The occupants had their field of corn and potatoes, 
kept a cow, fatted a pig, had pasture for cow, and 
were daily laborers on the farm. Their wages were 
fifty cents per day in planting and hoeing, seventy- 
five in haying. Many of them had large families, 
with plenty to eat and drink and clothe them with. 
Good water came out of the hills to quench their 
thirst. Cider was nearly as free, and New England 
rum twenty-five cents per gallon, still the drunkards 
were few in those days. Corn fifty cents and pota- 
toes twelve cents per bushel. 

It took many laborers to carry on a large farm 
then, as there was not any machinery to lighten 

37 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



labor. The farmers planted and sowed extensively, 
corn, potatoes, oats, rye, flax and wheat sufficient 
for their own use. Extensive flouring mills were 
minus, and they had to depend upon the home grist- 
mill to grind the wheat, and the flour was not " Pro- 
cess " or " Pillsbury " but was the best we could get, 
and had a good taste and we throve on it. The land 
of the hills and valleys was rich and productive. My 
father used to raise some thousand bushels of corn 
and the same of oats and potatoes for years. Three 
hundred bushels of potatoes per acre was a small 
yield ; we took the surplus by the cartload to the 
starch factory of Stephen Hosford, located a little 
below Bullock Pond. 

In early autumn, cloudy days not being favorable 
for haying, the boys and hired men were put into the 
flax field pulling flax, which was discouraging and 
back-breaking work for the boys. The flax was 
bound and taken to the barn and the seed beaten 
out. It had to be spread on the new mown fields 
to rot, ready for the flax brake in the fall, then 
swingled to separate the schives from the flax, then 
hatcheled to separate the tow from the flax, and 
make it ready for the little flax wheel on which it 
was spun ready for the loom, to be woven into sheets 
and towelling, and the tow into cloth for boys' pants 
for summer wear, which was strong and lasting, but 
rather annoying to the flesh for some days when new, 

38 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



as drawers were then unknown. There was no time 
during the year that my father did not have a hun- 
dred bushels of corn in his crib, and when corn was 
wanted in the village they came up and supplied their 
wants, and Buxton was called Egypt by the dwellers 
in the village. There was but. little money in circu- 
lation in those days, not any bank or bank-accounts 
to draw from, and grain and other produce from the 
farm was the only exchange with merchants for 
goods. The merchants obtained their goods from 
New York, coming by boat up the Hudson River to 
Troy, and they were carted from there. They used 
to employ the farmers to transport their goods from 
there, which gave them a chance to get a look at the 
city and the country outside of their town and pay 
some of their indebtedness to the merchant. 

The Whitmans were the early merchants of the 
town and they had a large trade from the surround- 
ing country, Pownal, Stamford, Adams, etc., and 
became wealthy as wealth was reckoned in those 
days. The old store they traded in was connected 
with their dwelling, and now forms a part of Mrs. 
Truman Cole's house. About the only money 
lenders were Ambrose Hall, who built and occupied 
the George Mills house in South Williamstown, and 
Henry Shaw of Lanesboro. My father used to 
obtain money from them to pay for his land pur- 
chases. The money was in specie. I heard my 

39 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



father say Hall had it sent to him from New York 
in silver dollars packed edgewise in a half barrel. 
Not any millionaires. The people were more equal 
in this world's goods and socially, and had a good 
time. Social life among the young was more on an 
equality than now. The gatherings were few except 
in the autumn and winter, when huskings, apple 
paring bees and spelling school contests were numer- 
ous. We went from house to house with our paring 
machines and needles, pared, quartered, cored and 
strung apples the fore-part of the evening, then par- 
took of a feast of pumpkin-pie and cheese, with 
sweet cider for a beverage, after which we played 
"Come, Phelander, let's be a marching," and 
"Oats, peas, beans and barley grow," then salute 
the girls and they would return the compliment. 
We would break up about midnight and commence 
our homeward march with some nice little girl in a 
close fitting red hood on one arm. 

But the spelling contests were our delight. In the 
winter evenings we went from district to district, 
storing away the scholars in a long box sleigh well 
furnished with straw. Thus we went over the 
hills and a great way off to conquer the neigh- 
boring schools. I had a little sister about ten years 
old who would spell down the oldest and largest of 
the scholars, and I took her under my care with us, 
and we came off victorious every time. I remember 
40 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



going one evening when in my teens to the center 
district. The old long school-house stood a little 
south of the old white church on the hill between 
Dr. H. L. Sabin's and Mrs. Benjamin's places. Old 
Mr. Boardman purchased it and Dr. Sabin traded 
with him and gave him a plot of land near where 
Moses Noel's house stands. It was sold by Dr. 
Sabin's heirs to L. E. Noyes, and moved west of the 
road and remodeled by him into a tenement house. 
I was selected as a leader of one of the sides to 
choose the contestants for that side, and, of course, 
my first choice was the girl I wished to sit beside me, 
and I think I must have been whispering to her or 
had my thoughts occupied with the question of 
seeing that young lady home when the teacher put 
out a word for me to spell, and not getting the 
correct sound of the word I spelled "courtship," 
which raised a great laugh on me, in which the 
teacher joined, but excused me under the circum- 
stances. But the fun of the thing was the word had 
no sound like the one I spelled. After the close of 
the school I saw the girl home, and she didn't 
upbraid me for spelling the wrong word. 

Dancing was not popular in those days in Wil- 
liamstown, very few knew the steps and they were 
an awkward set of young people, and there being a 
large class of young men and girls, we conceived 
the idea of getting up a dancing school for our 

41 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



improvement. Col. William Waterman kept the old 
tavern at the lower part of the village, and a com- 
mittee of young men called on the colonel and made 
arrangements for a hall for the school, and we had 
a school of twenty-five couples, which was taught 
by William Hodskins of North Adams. The young 
people came from the hills and valleys and we had a 
good social time, learned to dance and appear at our 
ease. The school was so well conducted that dancing 
became quite popular and they had another school the 
following winter, attended by some of the scholars 
of the former school and many new ones, and the 
community became satisfied that the school was a 
good thing and dancing a harmless recreation. Some 
five matches were made in the school and culminated 
in happy marriages. 

In my very young days I was not permitted to 
go into the village except Sunday to church, to 
commencement and to mill. Commencement day of 
the college was a great day then. It took place in 
August, and there was great strife among the farmers 
to finish haying before that day so as to be ready to 
attend. It was a great day for the boys. All the 
space back of the old white meeting-house on the 
hill, down the slope west, was covered with wagons 
and tents, and was swarming with people from the 
hills and valleys and neighboring towns. For 
twenty- five cents, which was about the extent of my 

42 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



funds, I could purchase ginger-bread, sweet cider 
and other eatables sufficient for a stomach-ache for 
two days. 

The strict surveillance of the parents over the 
country boys seemed rather hard, and made them 
appear rather verdant when they came out, but on 
looking back over the lives of others I find they 
were the boys who made men that distanced the 
village boys. They came up with better constitu- 
tions and better habits. 

In 1836 Anthony Sanders purchased the Hoxsey 
farm, which brought a large family of young people 
to our immediate neighborhood, and a strong friend- 
ship sprung up between the two families, which has 
been lasting. The oldest son was about my age. 
We fitted for college together, entered the same 
class and were chums for two years in college, and 
for four years we traveled the Buxton road together, 
and when we graduated Sanders studied for the 
ministry and went as a missionary to Ceylon. In 
1866 he returned to this country with five boys. One 
I took when eight years old, put him through college 
and the seminary, and in 1880 he was sent out by 
the Board as one of the pioneer missionaries of the 
western African field. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOMETHING IN THE LINE OF GENEALOGY — THE 
DANFORTH FAMILY OLD AND HONORED— FOUNDED 
IN THIS COUNTRY IN 1634 — INTERESTING FRAG- 
MENTS OF THE FAMILY HISTORY — IMPORTANT 
POSITIONS HELD BY VARIOUS MEMBERS — SOME 
PREACHED AND OTHERS PRACTISED. 

There is no greater refreshment of the mind, 
wearied with the noise and worry of the present, 
than to be carried out from itself into the far away 
past, and to be able to realize the daily life, partici- 
pate in the joys and sorrows, and revel in the quaint 
memories of remote ancestors with a zest propor- 
tioned to the dissimilarity of the men and women 
and the customs and fashions of to-day. Therefore, 
I do not think it out of place, but rather due to the 
parents and children who occupied that quaint old 
house described in the first article of my boyhood 
reminiscences, to devote some few articles to por- 
traying the lives and characters of them and their 
ancestors. 

My father, Keyes Danforth, was a son of Jonathan 
Danforth, who was born in Billerica, Mass., June 
14, 1736, of the fourth generation from Nicholas 
Danforth, who came to this country from Framling- 
ham, England, in 1634, with three sons and three 
daughters between the ages of six and sixteen, (his 

4-1 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



wife having died in England in 1629) and settled in 
New Towne, now Cambridge, Mass. Nicholas died 
in April, 1638, only about three years and a half 
after his arrival. But that time had been actively 
and usefully filled. When the father laid down his 
work it was not to be abandoned or neglected. We 
can well understand that by precept and example he 
had taught watchfulness and energy to his children. 
Certain it is that they possessed these qualities. 

Of course, care of the household devolved largely 
upon Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, then in her 
twentieth year, and her sister Anna, two years 
younger. But the death of their mother nine years 
before had long ago made useful their services in the 
family ; and doubtless their training had developed 
their talents in that direction. And, though in a 
strange land, they were not among strangers. In 
eighteen months Elizabeth married Andrew Belcher. 
Five years later her sister married Matthew Bridge. 
Her brother Thomas married the same year, and 
her younger sister, Lydia, married to William Bea- 
man of Saybrook, Conn., one year earlier, in her 
nineteenth year, had gone there and that was thence- 
forth her home. There she died at the age of sixty- 
two. Her name appears as grantee of land bought 
from Joshua, son of Uncas, an Indian Sachem. 

Jonathan, the youngest of the family, was now 
sixteen years old, a vigorous, active youth, soon to 

45 



Boyhood Reminiscenxes. 



be the pioneer of new settlements and the surveyor 
of farms, of townships, and of more extended tracts 
far and near. He was able to take care of himself. 
His brother Samuel, two years older, was now 
pursuing his studies in Harvard College. 

The Belchers, descendants from Elizabeth Dan- 
forth, were staunch loyalists, one of whom was a 
wealthy and liberal merchant of Boston, who held 
many offices of trust. One was a Royal Governor, 
first of Massachusetts and afterwards of New Jersey. 
Another, of the next generation, was Lieutenant 
Governor and Chief Justice of Nova Scotia. Another 
of her descendants was Sampson S. Blower, who 
was associated with John Adams and Josiah Quincy 
as counsel for the British soldiers, indicted for murder 
in the Boston massacre. He was afterwards Chief 
Justice of Nova Scotia, and reached the great age of 
one hundred years and seven months. 

From these married daughters were descended the 
Ellerys, Danas, and the Channings, renowned doctors 
of divinity and medicine, of whom it was said that 
one preached and the other practised ; the Greens, 
renowned as printers for several generations, (the 
eldest of whom printed Elliott's Indian Bible of 
Harvard College, and who in their vvork were associ- 
ated with Judge Samuel Danforth of Cambridge, 
Mather Byles in Boston, and Benjamin Franklin in 
Philadelphia.) The Bradstreets, Lyndes, Byfields, 
46 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Russells, Fitches and the Garfields, from the latter of 
whom descended our martyr president, were also 
among their descendants. 

Thomas Danforth, the eldest son of Nicholas, was 
a man of much ability. That he possessed the 
respect of his contemporaries is shown by the many 
offices to which he was called. That he was a man 
of energy, of decision, sound judgment and tact is 
proved by the success 'with which those trusts were 
fulfilled. In 1643, at twenty-one years of age, he 
was admitted freeman, and that year he was married. 
In 1650 he was treasurer of Harvard College, which 
office he held for nineteen years, and the historian of 
the college pays high tribute to his fidelity and good 
judgment, acknowledging also a valuable gift in his 
will of lands in Framingham, where at one time he 
had several thousand acres. For two terms he was 
deputy (representative) to the General Court, and in 
1659 he was chosen one of the assistant councilors 
of the executive, to which office he was annually 
elected for twenty years. Then in 1679 until the 
dissolution of the colonial government in 1686, he 
was deputy governor, associated with the venerable 
Governor Bradstreet. 

But, though Danforth was only deputy in name, 
he really exerted the influence belonging to the 
higher office. During the same period of seven years 
he held the responsible and difficult position of 

47 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



president of Maine, which had become a province 
subordinate to Massachusetts. Thither he went in 
March, 1680, invested with full powers and pro- 
claimed his authority to the assembled freeholders at 
York, exhibited his commission and established his 
government. 

In the troublous times which preceded the sub- 
version of the charter, Danforth stood fonvard as 
the unflinching advocate of the rights of the people. 
His zeal was rewarded by exclusion from office 
during the brief administration of Dudley, and the 
subsequent usurpation by the despotic Andreas. But 
when the people, impatient of restraint and embold- 
ened by the news of the revolution, were ready to 
rebel, Danforth seized the opportunity, wrote and 
sent a despatch to Gov. Andreas, who had retreated 
to his fort on Fort Hill, saying that he could no 
longer restrain the people and demanding surrender. 
The frightened governor, like Mark Scott's coon, 
came down at once and was by Danforth and his 
associates marched down King Street, and sent 
thence to the castle in the harbor, a prisoner. 

Danforth and his colleagues were escorted up 
King Street to the old Court House at its head, and 
there resumed the official functions from which they 
had been arbitrarily expelled. 

During more than thirty years he was recorder of 
Middlesex county, and during part of the time its 
48 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



treasurer ; from 1662 to 1679 he was commissioner 
from Massachusetts to the New England confeder- 
acy, which negotiated treaties with the Indians, and 
from 1690 to 1692 he was Lieutenant Governor of 
New Hampshire. In 1692 he was chosen Associate 
Justice of the superior court of Massachusetts, which 
office he held at the time of his death in 1699. His 
wife was Mary, daughter of Henry Withington of 
Dorchester, by whom he had twelve children. His 
sons died in his lifetime. 

Samuel, the second son of Nicholas, in his child- 
hood was dedicated to the ministry and seemed to take 
kindly to his destiny. He entered Harvard College, 
and graduated in 1643, being a member of the second 
class which received the honors of that youthful 
institution. He served as tutor in the college five 
years, and in the meantime pursued his studies in 
divinity. In 1650 he was ordained colleague to John 
Elliot, pastor of the First Church of Roxbury, whose 
labors for the red man occupied much of his time. 
Danforth's wife was the daughter of the famous Mr. 
Wilson, the first pastor of the Old Church in Boston, 
and their family consisted of twelve children. 

In the church records, under date of November 
9, 1674, Elliot writes: "Our reverend pastor, 
Samuel Danforth, sweetly rests from his labors." 
His funeral " was attended with great influence," and 
his remains were laid in Governor Dudley's tomb. 

49 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 

The youngest son, Jonathan, was one of the first 
settlers of Billerica, being then in the twenty-fifth 
year of his age. In the concise words of the histo- 
rian of the town, " In view of his long life and 
many and varied services he might be recognized as 
the father of the town." His skill as a surveyor 
gave him employment far and wide. For years he 
probably surveyed every land grant in Billerica. His 
descriptions fill two hundred pages in his own very 
clear and handsome handwriting in the volume of 
land grants. " Many of his plates are preserved in 
the state archives," and his surveys extended into 
the state of New Hampshire. His marriage was 
first on record, though it seemed to have taken place 
in Boston, as it is recorded there. He was town 
clerk in 1665 and 1666, and was selectman and repre- 
sentative. His energy and wisdom made his counsel 
of value, and his piety shone. He was the life-long 
and trusted friend of his pastor, Mr. Whiting; who 
survived him but five months. The house which 
Danforth built and in which he lived and died, is 
disappearing as we write, (March, 1S80,) to give 
place to a new one, a good picture of which is pre- 
sented in the history of Billerica. He was twice 
married. His first wife was Elizabeth Poulter, 
daughter of John and Mary, born in Raleigh, Essex 
County, England, September 1, 1633. Danforth 
died September 7, 171 2. 

50 



CHAPTER VII. 

ANOTHER CHAPTER ABOUT ANCESTORS — THE DAN- 
FORTH FAMILY CAME TO WILLIAMSTOWN IN 1775 
— JOSHUA, THE FIRST POSTMASTER OF PITTS- 
FIELD, WAS APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT WASHING- 
TON IN 1794. 

My grandfather, Jonathan Danforth, went from 
Billerica to Western, now Warren, Worcester County, 
when a young man, settled there and married Lydia 
Read. Their children were five, two sons and three 
daughters, viz., Joshua, Jonathan, Dorothy, Lydia 
and Hannah. After the death of his first wife he 
married Miriam Cowee of Western. In 1775 he 
moved with his family to Williamstown, except his 
eldest son, Joshua, who was in the army, where he 
remained until the close of the war of the American 
Revolution. My grandfather served as a minute 
man at the battle of Bunker Hill with his two sons, 
Joshua, aged sixteen, and Jonathan, aged fourteen. 
The children of his second marriage were Cowee, 
Keyes, William and Clarissa, all born in Williams- 
town. The first real estate purchased by him, which 
he occupied, was house lots Nos. iS, 20, 22, 24, and 
26, also fifteen acres in the rear of the house lots 
Nos. 28 and 30. This land he purchased of Benjamin 
Simonds by deed dated April, 1787, which real 

5i 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



estate was purchased by my father, Keyes Danforth, 
after the death of his father, Jonathan, of the execu- 
tor and is now owned by the writer. The next real 
estate he purchased of David Noble by deed dated 
December, 1800, consisting of 150 acres, on which 
was located the old house described in the first chap- 
ter. My grandfather died in 1802, and my father, 
Keyes Danforth, bought the interest of the legatees 
to that property and lived there till he built the 
house on the north side of Main Street, where he 
lived the remainder of his life. After his death in 
1 85 1, I purchased the farm on the south side of the 
street, where stood the old house in which I was 
born, and if farming had been my business I would 
have kept it. Hoping to keep it in the family name, 
I sold it in 1856 to my cousin, William Danforth, 
but he, getting tired of farming, sold it in 1863 to 
Henry Goodrich, and it is now owned by Vandike 
Brown of New York, who intends to build next year 
a fine summer home for himself on the site of the 
old house of my boyhood. In 1868 I purchased of 
my brothers and sister the home farm on the north 
side of Main Street, which I have occupied since 
1851. 

Joshua Danforth, eldest son of Jonathan, during 

the Revolutionary War, was located on the Hudson 

River near West Point. He was a lieutenant and 

at one time was judge advocate in the army. He 

52 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



kept a diary which I once had in my possession, and 
which is now in the hands and keeping of his grand- 
daughter, Mrs. Field of Minneapolis, Minn., in 
which we find often written by him : " Went over 
the river last evening to a dance, met Mrs. and Miss 
So and So and had a good time." One day he wrote 
as follows : "I am twenty-one years old to-day, and 
went over the river in the evening to a dance, had a 
good time," from which I would infer, though in the 
midst of war, they danced and had a good time. At 
the close of the war he visited his parental home in 
Williamstown, settled in Pittsfield, married a daugh- 
ter of David Noble of Williamstown, held many 
offices of trust and filled them well ; was appointed 
postmaster of Pittsfield by President Washington 
in 1794, the year the office was established. This 
office he held at the time of his death, January 30, 
1S37, being the oldest postmaster in term of service 
in the country. He left a large family of grown-up 
children, all now dead. His youngest daughter, 
Frances, died last year in Minneapolis, leaving 
children and grandchildren. 

Jonathan, brother of Joshua, married a daughter 
of David Johnson of Williamstown, settled in St. 
Albans, Vt. , and lived and died there. The wife of 
the late Judge and ex-Senator Poland of Vermont 
was a granddaughter of Jonathan. 

Dorothy married Ebenezer Billings of Cambridge, 

53 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



N. Y. Their children were three, one son and two 
daughters. Danforth Billings, the son, a very 
talented young man, died when in the seminary 
preparing for the ministry. I heard my father speak 
of him as- one of nature's noblemen, his manners 
were so perfect. One of the daughters married 
Thomas Rice. Their children were two daughters 
and one son. The youngest daughter, Sophia, mar- 
ried Mr. Hubbard of Cambridge, and died young, 
leaving one child, who survived the mother but a few 
years. Mr. Hubbard after the death of Sophia 
married the eldest daughter, Mary. He was a very 
active, energetic man, accumulating much property 
in his lifetime. He was president of the bank at 
the time of his death, and left his widow with much 
property to care for. Mrs. Hubbard still lives in 
and owns her father's homestead. She is an ener- 
getic woman of much wealth, owning extensive real 
estate out west. In my young college days I used 
often in my vacation to drive up to Cambridge and 
spend a few days with the family. The other 
Billings daughter married Mr. Watkins. Some of 
their children live in Cambridge. 

Lydia Danforth married a Mr. Woodward and 
lived in the state of New York. The mother of the 
late Vice-President Wheeler was descended from 
this daughter. Hannah, the youngest daughter, 
died young in Williamstown. 

54 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Cowee Danforth, the eldest son of the second wife 
of Jonathan, married Clarissa, daughter of Colonel 
Tyler of Williamstown, who lived in a large two 
story house north of the Jerome house, which was 
occupied by Cowee Danforth after Tyler's death. 
The old house is now gone. In former years it was 
known as the Wolcott place. The new house which 
Dr. Charles A. Stoddard of New York built last 
autumn is located on land formerly owned by his 
great-grandfather, and is a short distance south-west 
of the old Wolcott house, which has disappeared. 

William Danforth, the youngest son of Jonathan, 
married Miss Noble of Pownal, Vt., and settled in 
Sodus, Wayne County, N. Y., where he had a large 
farm. They had a family of two sons and some 
three or four daughters. One of the sons married, 
and most of the daughters, but they had no children. 
I heard him say that "He would rather catch a 
grandchild than a fox," which fully explained his 
great desire for a grandchild, as he was a great 
hunter. These parents died many years ago. The 
children are dead and the family is extinct. 

Clarissa, the youngest daughter of Jonathan, mar- 
ried John Hickox, who built the house and occupied 
the farm on Bee Hill which John F. Prindle now 
owns and which he traded with Col. William 
Waterman for the old Mansion House property, 
which property then comprised the land north where 

55 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Frof. Hewitt's and Mrs. Huntoon's homes are built, 
Dr. Bascom's and Mrs. Tenney's property Park 
Street, and the land now west of Park Street, north 
of the Whitman and Mather lots, which is now a 
very valuable property. At that time it was valued 
at some $5,000. He moved into the old Mansion 
House and kept a public house, which wasn't his 
calling, and he failed and moved to Stafford, N. Y., 
where these parents died. Their eldest son, Robin- 
son, settled in Syracuse, N. Y., and lived and 
died there. Two of the daughters married Huxley 
brothers. One of these brothers graduated at Wil- 
liams College, and was a minister. He died in the 
state of Wisconsin, where some of his children live. 
The other Huxley brother lived on the Huxley 
homestead in New Marlboro, Mass. I presume some 
of the children live there now. One of the Hickox 
daughters married Mr. Hodges of Vermont, who 
went west many years ago, taking along a large flock 
of sheep, and went into the sheep husbandry. On 
their wedding tour they came to my father's house. 
I have heard nothing about them for years. The 
rest of the family are scattered through the west and 
some are in California. The girls were fine looking 
and became too proud to live on Bee Hill farm, and 
persuaded their parents to move to the village, and 
by this move they lost their property. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OLD TIMES AND MODERN TIMES COMPARED — CHAR- 
ACTERISTICS OF KEYES DANFORTH, BORN IN 1 778 
— A PACK OF DOGS AND THEIR " HEAVENLY 
MUSIC" — THE HUNTER AND THE MINISTER— WHY 
ONE BOY GREW LARGER THAN HIS BROTHERS. 

When we compare our own days, with the hurry 
of life, the restless, self-conscious activity which is 
characteristic of it, with the deliberate pace, the 
quiet and speculative temper of mind, the dignity, 
and, not least, the reticence which belonged to an 
earlier generation, by which ours sometimes seems 
to have been disinherited, even to realize the atmos- 
phere of that day, to appropriate it, if only for a 
moment, confers upon us a welcome sense of leisure 
and repose. 

In the reminiscences of my boyhood I have en- 
deavored to portray the primitive lives and manners 
of the people of those early days as I experienced 
them and as they came down to me from those who 
were old when I was a boy. My last article was a 
partial sketch of my grandfather and a large part of 
his family. The writer's father, Keyes Danforth, was 
born in Williamstown in 1778, during the Revolu- 
tion, in the house erected by Col. Benjamin Simonds 
on house lot No. 3, in which Simonds lived and 

57 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



which he kept open as a public house, and in which 
the late Dr. H. L. Sabin lived many years the latter 
part of his life. Within a few years it has been 
moved by his son, N. H. Sabin, to the extreme west 
end of Glen Avenue to make room for his beautiful 
residence erected near the site of the old house. 
Some few years later my grandfather built and lived 
in a small one-story house on house lot No. 30, on 
the brink of the hill back from Main Street, near a 
spring which gushed out of the hill a few feet below. 
The cellar hole is now visible but a few feet east of 
the writer's barn. When he purchased the farm 
across the street in 1800 and moved there, this old 
house was moved out near the street and stood a 
few rods east of my farm house, and was occupied 
by my uncle Cowee in my early days and was always 
called the Cowee house thereafter. After my father's 
death I moved the old house back by the shed for a 
tool and hen house, and some few years later added 
another story, and there it stands a shelter for the 
chickens. For some six years after my father built 
the house I now occupy, on house lot No. 30, we 
obtained all the water used at the house from the 
same spring under the hill until I, a boy, organized 
a company from the hired men on the place and dug 
a well, striking a vein of water which fed the spring, 
which is to this day a well of living water good for 
man and beast. 

53 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Keyes Danforth was the second son of Jonathan 
by his second wife Miriam Cowee, who was of 
Scotch- Irish descent. He was of stalwart form, and 
developed into a man of strong mind and will, 
guided by good common sense. The late Governor 
Briggs once said to the writer that he had one of the 
best legal minds he had ever come in contact with, 
and if he had been educated to the law he would 
have made a very able lawyer. He was often called 
into cases of arbitration, and the governor had tried 
cases before him and had managed legal suits for 
him, and he found the cases were prepared for him 
by a logical and legal mind. He should have been 
educated and taken the profession of the law, but 
in his younger days he was, I presume, too fond of 
fun and frolic, as many young men were, to become 
a student, and lived to regret his misspent hours, 
till they were too far advanced and he was incum- 
bered with a family. He was well read in statute 
law and was the poor man's lawyer, to whom they 
came for advice and aid to relieve them from a tight 
place. He was very shrewd and had great tact, and 
was a born leader. He was a strong democrat, and 
was democratic; he loved the common people and was 
their friend. As some eminent divine said, " God 
must love the common people for he has so many 
more of them." He was a genial companion, fond 
of a joke, and had a great fund of stories and 

59 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



regaled the company with them well embellished. 
A man who worked for him for years used to say he 
had but one desire to live to an old age and that was 
4 * That he might tell his children what he did when 
young." He was fond of hunting, and in those early 
days the wooded mountains were full of game, large 
and small. He had some eight or ten dogs — fox 
hounds, coon hunters, squirrel dogs and gray hounds. 
When he obtained a young dog he trained him for 
•coons by fastening a coon's foot to a stick, and 
starting me, a boy, to track it on the ground out into 
the orchard and hang it up in the tree, and he would 
start the puppy on the track and tree the foot. 

Old Mr. Solomon, who lived in the north part of the 
town, though older than Danforth, used often to be 
his companion on his hunting excursions. About him 
still linger in these latter days many quaint sayings. 
The baying of dogs after a fox was great music for 
Solomon. One Sunday morning his dogs started a 
fox on the hills and were after him with vigor when, 
stepping to his door he called out to a man who was 
stopping with him and said to him : "Hark and 
hear that heavenly music, don't you hear it ?" " No." 

was the answer, " those d d dogs make such a 

yelping I can't hear it." 

This same Solomon went one morning to Stone 
Hill hunting, where he had been many a time before. 
It being a foggy morning, and his dogs failing to 
60 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



start a fox he concluded to go home. Getting be- 
wildered in the fog, he went in the opposite direction 
and found himself down on the river road to South 

Williamstown. He said he was " so d d mad he 

didn't know his own name." Another story current 
about him in his hunting expeditions : His dogs ran 
a fox into a hollow tree, and, hearing some one 
chopping not far distant, he applied to him for the 
loan of his ax. The man said " Yes," but kept on 
chopping. Getting somewhat impatient at the man's 
delay, he asked him his name, and the man replied 
that his name was Swift, the minister of the parish. 
" The devil you are, but you are devilish slow about 
letting me have that ax," said Solomon. Swift said 
to him, " You wouldn't cut down a tree for a fox." 

" Yes, d n it," replied Solomon, " I would cut 

down a meeting-house for a fox." 

Dr. Emmons liked to hunt and used to go hunt- 
ing with my father often. The doctor married a 
daughter of old Mr. Cone, a quiet, eccentric man 
who was fond of telling stories, which were harm- 
less, as they were mostly about himself or his family. 
The doctor was somewhat careless, and didn't keep 
a man to drive him or care for his horse, and Cone 
used to say that when he cleaned out the stable in 
the spring he found a number of guns under the 
manure. Cone said his father's family consisted of 
five boys, all of them small but one, named Phineas. 
61 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



On being asked what made Phineas so much larger 
than the other brothers, he said when boys they used 
to eat bean porridge out of one large dish, all stand- 
ing round the table. The other boys would keep 
the beans whirling, and Phineas, being left-handed, 
would come in the other way and catch the beans, 
which made him grow. 

Danforth was a great admirer of fine horses, and 
I remember many beautiful horses he raised and 
owned. I see but few in these latter days which 
equal them in beauty of form. He had a Kentucky 
dam and an English blooded horse, from which was 
descended a race of very beautiful horses. I have 
known him to have some twenty horses and colts at 
one time, still most of the team work on the farm 
was done by oxen, of which he never had less than 
three yokes at a time. My father died in October, 
185 1. Very few now living remember him, even in 
his old age. I will close this article with the follow- 
ing taken from the history of Berkshire county : 

" Keyes Danforth, son of Jonathan, was born at 
Williamstown in 1778. In early life he exhibited 
many characteristics of his father, bold and fearless 
in his nature, yet of a quiet and reserved disposition, 
never seeking a quarrel but ready and quick to resent 
an affront. Had he enjoyed the facilities for acquir- 
ing a classical education he would have made an 
able lawyer, for as he grew to manhood he developed 
62 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



great mental force and energy of character, but for 
lack of opportunity to acquire an education his field 
of usefulness was to a great extent limited. He 
worked on his father's farm and was sent to school 
during the winter months. He was a successful 
farmer, accumulated a fair competence, and in his 
day was considered a man of fair means. He was a 
born leader, and during his life was the recognized 
leader of the democratic party in his locality. Many 
incidents are related of him as showing the means 
by which his party attained success. Shortly before 
election day he would start out with his dog and gun, 
minus the lock, and sometimes without lock, stock or 
barrel. He never failed however to bag his game, 
the results of which were shown on election day. 
Though in appearance the game would compare 
favorably with Falstaffs recruits, yet the votes 
counted all the same. He was elected to the legis- 
lature in 1S21, and for a number of years thereafter. 
He was for several years selectman and county com- 
missioner, and during the greater part of his life he 
held other offices of trust. He was a man of good 
judgment and clear head, and was frequently called 
upon to arbitrate differences among his townsmen. 
He was a genial companion, fond of a joke, and 
very entertaining in company. Few men ever lived 
in this community who were better known or more 
highly respected." 



CHAPTER IX. 

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE DANFORTH FAMILY 
— EAST MOUNTAIN LAND THAT WAS BOUGHT CHEAP 
AND BECAME VALUABLE — PERSONAL CHARACTER- 
ISTICS OF SOME OF THE BOYS— PUBLIC HONORS 
THAT CAME TO THEM — TRICKS THAT GEORGE 
PLAYED IN SCHOOL. 

In the last chapter I wrote of the father and some 
things which took place in those early times. The 
mother and the children who came out of that quaint 
old house, described in my first chapter, were re- 
served for future articles. Our dear mother, the 
angel of the household, who thought, planned and 
did for us ! Her maiden name was Mary Bushnell, 
of Saybrook, Conn., and when ten years old her 
father moved to Pownal, Vt., where he had a brother 
living. In 1800 she was married to Keyes Dan- 
forth. Life may hold many a love, but only one 
mother. Her heart was warm and full, and her tem- 
per was sweet and equitable and always kind. She 
had much wit and was strong in humor. She was 
slight in her young days and very beautiful, and she 
carried youth to a good old age, dying in January, 
1867, in her eighty-third year. From this union 
there were eight children, viz : Charles, Bushnell, 
(ieorge, Mary, Hannah, Harriet, Keyes and Helen 
Augusta. 

64 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



The eldest son, Charles, was born in 1804. After 
spending his boyhood on his father's farm he fitted 
for and entered Williams College in 1822, having 
among his class-mates Prof. Albert Hopkins and 
Hon. William Hyde, late of Ware. When he left 
college he read law in his uncle Asgell Gibb's law 
office at Ovid, New York. After admission to the 
bar he settled in LeRoy, Genesee County, entering 
into law practice in partnership with Samuel Skinner, 
son of Benjamin Skinner of Williamstown, a graduate 
of Williams in the class of 18 16, was Judge of the 
Supreme Court one term, was postmaster of LeRoy, 
and held other minor offices of trust. He married 
Charity Foster, eldest daughter of Daniel Foster of 
I .eRoy, from which union were born a daughter and 
son, Helen and Roderick. The daughter married 
William C. Hart of Troy, New York, who died in 
Williamstown four years ago, leaving a widow and 
two children. Roderick married a Miss Ward of 
LeRoy, located in Cleveland, Ohio, and made much 
money in the manufacture of burning fluid ; lost his 
fortune in St. Louis, moved to Washington, D. C, 
and died there, leaving four sons who are said to be 
fine young men. One of them is a physician in 
practice in Washington. 

Charles, after the death of his wife, went to Wash- 
ington to live and married a Yirginia woman, dying 
in 1886. He left a widow and a son named Charles. 

65 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Bushnell Danforth was born in 1806, and grew up 
a good looking, six-foot, stalwart young man with 
untiring energy and great zeal in everything in which 
he engaged. He was useful on the farm ; his father 
kept him at work and did not give him an oppor- 
tunity to get a liberal education, which he should 
have had, as he was endowed with good natural 
talents, and with his push and ambition he would 
have made his mark in the world. He remained at 
home on the farm until he was twenty-six years old. 
When he left, his father gave him much land on the 
east mountain, which did not cost him much, as he 
and Nathan Putnam of Adams purchased 1,000 
acres in Clarksburg in 1822 for $200. In 1828 Dan- 
forth bought out Putnam, paying him $200 for his 
half ; but when he gave it to Bushnell it was quite 
valuable. Bushnell sold much of the south part of 
the lot to the factory boys, so-called in those days, 
a company consisting of Sanford Blackinton, Wells 
& White, doing business those days in the village 
now called Blackinton. The balance he sold to Caleb 
Brown. It had by that time become quite valuable 
and he realized enough from the sale to furnish him 
with money enough to go west. He located in Mason, 
Ingham County, Mich. The county being new, he 
suffered much with the ague, which this new country 
was full of. 

In 1836, he married Elizabeth Foster of Le Roy, 
66 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



New York. A short time after his marriage, he 
came to Williamstown on a visit with his bride. His 
old friend, John Bulkley, called on him one morning 
and they were talking over old times. The bride 
finally remarked, "Yes, Mr. Bulkley, Bush has told 
me all about those old times — he has told me every- 
thing." "God," said John, "you just let me tell a 
little while and see if he has." 

When the capital of the state was moved to 
Lansing, he was a member of the state senate, and 
Gov. McClellen, who, by the way, was brother-in- 
law of our dear old Dr. H. L. Sabin, appointed him 
superintendent of the erection of the capital build- 
ings, and he moved to Lansing, and purchasing a 
water privilege there erected flouring mills. In July, 
1853, he consigned to me for sale 300 barrels of 
flour. He visited his old home that year, and, re- 
turning to his western home, died the next month at 
the age of forty-seven. He had a constitution which 
would have carried him to a good old age, but his 
ambition, imprudence and the Michigan ague climate 
in those early days cut short his life and took from 
us the best hearted of brothers. His was the first 
death in the family, following father's death. He 
left a widow with no children. 

In 1890 the writer wrote to the clerk of the senate 
of Michigan to learn what year he was in the 
senate, and received from him the following letter : 

67 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



" Bushnell Danforth was state senator in 1847 and 
1848. By act of the legislature in 1846 the seat of 
government was moved from Detroit to Lansing. In 
the volume of Michigan Biographies, published a 
short time ago, it is stated that Bushnell Danforth 
was the first past master of Masons, associate county 
judge in 1838 and 1842, and delegate to the Con- 
stitutional Convention of 1850, the convention which 
framed our present constitution. 

"By way of a little curiosity in names that may 
be interesting to you, there was a member of the 
house of representatives in 1875 in this state whose 
name was Danforth Keyes, the reverse of yours." 

George was born in 1808, and was the fat boy and 
wag of the family. When a small boy the district 
school was kept in one of the rooms of the house 
now known as the Whelden house, and the master 
was a man by the name of Townsend, and all the 
children of the Buxton district attended. The old 
master was fond of cider. George used to cater to 
the old man's taste for that beverage, and any com- 
plaint made by George about any of the scholars was 
taken to be true by the master without investigation. 
Some one of the scholars would make a noise and 
the master would ask "Who's that?" and George 
would answer promptly, "It sounds like Ranslear," 
(Ran's Hoxie), and the master would apply the 
beech over Ranslear's head and shoulders. The late 
68 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Judge Buckley, who was one of the scholars in 
attendance, told the writer that George would get 
many of the boys whipped during the day and 
escape himself, when he was the one who made 
most of the noise which others were chastized for. 
There must have been a vein of cruelty in him to 
get pain inflicted on others, and it is difficult to see 
where the fun came in. He entered Williams Col- 
lege in the class of 183 1. At the close of sophomore 
year he was one of the prize speakers, and was 
awarded the first prize by the committee. One of 
his competitors was a son of a man connected with 
the college, and before the decision of the committee 
was made public they were persuaded to change and 
give the prize to the college man's son, and when it 
leaked out that he had been wronged, George was so 
angered that he left college, and commenced the 
study of law with his uncle Gibbs at Ovid, and was 
his partner after he was admitted to practice ; but 
soon after he went to Ann Arbor, Mich., and prac- 
ticed his profession there up to his death in 1864. 
He was very fleshy and was so jolly that every one 
commenced to laugh when they saw him coming. 
He married Mary Foster of LeRoy in 1834, (the 
three brothers married sisters,) was postmaster of 
Ann Arbor and member of the state senate in 1857. 
At his death, in 1864, he left a widow and four 
children, two sons and two daughters. The eldest 

69 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



son, George M., graduated at the University, Ann 
Arbor, studied law and commenced practice in De- 
troit, Mich. The eldest daughter, Mary, married 
Marshall Baxter, a graduate of the University, and 
settled in Chicago, 111. This son and daughter are 
dead. Elizabeth, the other daughter, married Ed- 
ward Jewett of Buffalo, N. Y., who was elected 
mayor of Buffalo last November. They have a son 
and daughter. Daniel F., the other son, is in busi- 
ness in Chicago. 



CHAPTER X. 

MORE ABOUT THE DANFORTH FAMILY — PERSONAL 
PECULIARITIES OF SOME OF ITS MEMBERS — SUC- 
CESS AND PROMINENCE ACHIEVED BY THE SONS — 
THE DAUGHTERS MARRIED ABLE MEN — THE LATE 
DR. H. L. SABIN — COMING DOWN TO THE PRESENT 
DAY. 

Mary, the eldest daughter of Keyes and Mary, 
inherited the mind of her father, was very industri- 
ous, but did not take kindly to domestic work ; was 
saving, that she might give to others in need, was a 
frugal wife and just the helpmate for a man careless 
of his money matters. She used to say every one had 
to work sometime in their lives, and rejoiced that 
she did her work when young. She married Abram 
B. Olin in 1838, a graduate of Williams College in 
1835, a tall, athletic young man, with large, piercing 
black eyes. He read law in Troy, N. Y., and com- 
menced his law practice there, and became a learned 
and brilliant lawyer, having such men as Judge Buel, 
Job Pierson, David L. Seymour, Martin I. Town- 
send and other strong men as his competitors. He 
was elected a member of Congress from the Troy 
district four terms, and in his last term, during the 
war, was chairman of the military committee of the 
House. At the close of his congressional term he 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



was appointed by President Lincoln Judge of the 
Supreme Court of Washington, D. C, in 1864, which 
position he held till a short time before his death 
in 1879, ne having resigned his judgeship a short 
time before on account of ill health. He left Mary, 
a widow with no children. She died in 1893. Their 
burial place is in the little cemetery lot on the hill of 
the old home farm in Williamstown. 

Hannah, the next daughter, was tall and stately, 
resembled her brother Bushnell in energy, ambition 
and love of work, was very domestic and took kindly 
to it, and it is difficult for her to take life easy now. 
In 1840 she married Joseph White, a graduate of 
the college in 1836, and one of its trustees from 
1848 to the time of his death, November, 1890, and 
treasurer of the college from 185S to 1S86. He read 
law in the office of Hon. Martin I. Townsend of 
Troy, and commenced its practice in Troy as partner 
of his brother-in-law, Abram B. Olin. In 1848 he 
left Troy for Lowell, Mass., and came to Williams- 
town in i860. He was secretary of the Massachu- 
setts Board of Education twenty-one years, successor 
of Hon. George Boutwell, and represented the state 
in both branches of the legislature. He was a fine 
looking, genteel, cultured man ; he loved books, was 
a great reader and collected one of the best private 
libraries in the state. He did a good work for the 
schools of the state. He was a decided party man, 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



but not a politician, and would not go into a scramble 
for office, believing that the office should seek the 
man, not the man the office. He was sometimes 
hasty in temper, but kind and gentle as a woman, 
loved his friends, had a thoughtful, forgiving spirit 
and was admired by every one who knew him. He 
left a widow, but no children. 

Harriet, the third daughter, was born in 1818, 
had a good mind and was beautiful, resembling her 
mother much. She was the pet of the older sisters, 
and was allowed by them to spend her time in study 
and reading and they would do her work. She 
married in 1843, George H. Browne of Providence, 
R. I , a graduate of Brown University. He read law 
and became one of the best lawyers in Providence, 
was a delegate to the convention which nominated 
Franklin Pierce for president, and was appointed by 
him United States attorney for the Rhode Island 
district. In i860 he was elected to Congress. While 
in Congress he left his seat and went to Providence 
and raised a regiment for the war, known as the 
1 2th Rhode Island regiment, of which he was 
colonel. He was in the battle of Fredericksburg 
and other battles, was very much beloved by his 
soldiers, and after the war his regiment had a re- 
union every year at Rocky Point, on Narragansett 
Bay. As a guest of Browne at one of the reunions, 
I witnessed the joyful time the old soldiers had in 

73 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



meeting each other and their colonel. He was a 
member of both branches of the legislature at various 
times, was elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the state by the legislature, which was Republican, 
while Browne was a Democrat, which appointment 
he declined on account of his health. He died very 
suddenly in 1885. He was a generous, whole-souled 
man. I read law in his office and was a member of 
his family, and was admitted to the supreme court 
bar in Providence. Harriet became very domestic 
and a fine housekeeper. She died in 1859, leaving 
a husband and two children, a son and daughter : 
Keyes Danforth Browne, who married a Miss Burt 
of Ogden, but now lives in Providence, having quite 
a large family of children, and Mary, who married 
J. Maus Schermerhorn, a graduate of Williams Col- 
lege in the class of 1869, now a business man in 
New York city. Some years after the death of our 
sister, Browne married Mrs. Lidgerwood of Geneva, 
Wis., a very fine, lovely woman, who survives him 
dearly beloved by us all. 

These three sisters were educated in the common 
schools and at Williamstown Academy, located 
where the Catholic Church now stands, and taught 
in those early days by Mr. Canning, father of the 
late E. W. B. Canning of Stock-bridge, a graduate 
of the college in 1834. They all obtained a good 
education, had good minds and, what is better still, 

74 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



good, strong common sense, which served them well 
in their young lives. They all married young men 
with good, strong, cultured minds, self-reliant, with 
ambition to become men of mark in the world and 
talents to carry out their plans for the future. They 
were all poor in this world's goods, but rich in 
preparation to wage a successful warfare for a place 
with others in the world's successes. These sisters 
were brought up with economical ideas and habits, 
and they were helpmeets to, instead of drags upon, 
their husbands all their lives. 

The fourth son was some years younger than these 
sisters, and, not having any playmates in the house- 
hold, "flocked alone," in his boyhood days. Still, 
he is ready to acknowledge it is fortunate for a boy 
to have sisters older to counsel and guide him, and 
any young man who grows up without sisterly in- 
fluence will find it a missing link all his life. His 
boyhood has been dwelt upon in former articles ; his 
manhood is not yet finished. In his young days 
there was a goodly number of young people in town 
and we had many pleasant times. But when he 
graduated from college in 1846, he was almost a 
stranger in his native town, and, being broken in 
health, was advised by good old Dr. Sabin to give 
up study for a year and work moderately on the 
farm. It was the first time that the shadow of the 
blues settled down upon him. He did work his 

75 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



father's farm, though not with moderation, paid off 
his debts, had renewed health and money enough 
left to resume his studies in the spring of 1848 and 
carry him through his three years' course with the 
small amount he earned in the meantime. He was 
admitted by the Supreme Court of Rhode Island to 
practice in 1850, and on that certificate was admitted 
to the Berkshire bar in 1851, and opened an office in 
the lower room of the old academy building, located 
where the Catholic Church now stands. Let me here 
record that Dr. H. L. Sabin was a dear, good friend 
to this young man in his life start, as he was to every 
young man to the manor born, who was inclined to 
settle in his native town. He used to say that so 
many of the young were leaving and the old only 
were left, with no young men to stay their hands, 
and it was through his advice and kindness, in 
addition to the fact that this young man's parents 
were getting along in years, and all the children had 
left their old home, which influenced him to open an 
office here. The doctor was one of the most genial, 
companionable men I ever knew. We worked to- 
gether many years in church and town affairs and I 
knew him well and enjoyed him much. He was the 
best man for the town, church and college who ever 
dwelt in this beautiful valley. He was a poor col- 
lector. He had an extensive practice, was careless 
in money matters, but he had a heart large as Block 

76 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Island. This son was married in September, 1852, 
to Anna L. Lyon, daughter of Col. James Lyon of 
Woodstock, Conn., who had a fine, well educated 
mind, deeply religious, with a strong will and great 
energy, but a frail constitution. Her ambition and 
thoughtfulness and care of others were too much 
for her strength and she died in 1868, in her thirty- 
fifth year, leaving one son, Bushnell, now post- 
master, and treasurer of the Savings Bank, and who 
was representative from the first Berkshire district to 
the legislature of 1885, and in 1885 was appointed 
by President Cleveland postmaster of Williamstown. 
He took the office from C. R. Taft, he having taken 
the office from the writer in 1861, who held the office 
from 1852 to 1861. Bushnell married in 1880, 
Katherine M. Mather, youngest daughter of the late 
B. F. Mather. They have one daughter, eleven 
years old, named Anna Lyon Danforth, after her 
departed grandmother, a bright little girl and a very 
dear little one to all the family. 

I have to be careful what I write about this fourth 
son, as he is living and may find fault with my state- 
ments, being somewhat in the predicament of old 
Dr. Emmons, when he wrote to Rev. Williams, once 
his classmate in college, saying that he was sick and 
expected to die ; if he did he wanted him to preach 
his funeral sermon. Some few weeks after receiving 
the note from Emmons, Williams wrote the doctor 

77 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



that he had a little leisure and had written his 
funeral sermon, and the doctor wrote him to come 
on and read the sermon to him. Williams did so. 
He sat down beside the doctor and commenced read- 
ing, when the doctor stopped him and began to 
criticise the sermon. Williams said : " Tut, tut, 
hold on, doctor, no criticising this ; remember you 
are dead now." 

From the time he commenced business it was 
work with him in his business and office. From 1862 
to 1882 he took charge of the college treasurer's office 
for Joseph White, the treasurer, who was obliged 
to be in his office in Boston most of the time ; served 
as school committee and town treasurer twenty years 
and as assessor and selectman at various times ; wa' 
twice honored by the first Berkshire representative 
district to seats in the legislature, in 1862 and 1880, 
was chairman of the committee on county estimates, 
and in 1880 was on the committee of probate and 
insolvency. In 1885 he was appointed justice of the 
police court of Williamstown. In 1869 he married 
Caroline M. Smith, a graduate of the Albany Female 
Academy in 1855. She is a model housekeeper, 
knows how to manage a home, and her greatest 
contest and trouble is to keep dirt out of the house 
and her husband dressed up. Not having any 
children, she keeps a herd of black cats for pets. 

Helen Augusta, the youngest daughter of the 

78 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



family, some years younger than the writer, was the 
prize child and daughter. She inherited the strong 
mind and will of the father, and being the youngest, 
became the pet and controlling spirit of the family. 
She was educated by her brother-in-law, Joseph 
White, who carried her through a college course in 
every study except Greek. She studied German 
under a noted German teacher at Mrs. Willard's 
Seminary in Troy, and became so perfected in the 
language that when the teacher took a vacation of 
some months abroad, he recommended her to Mrs. 
Willard to take charge of the German class, and she 
taught there a year. She was afterwards solicited 
to take charge of a noted female seminary in the 
eastern part of the state, but declined. In 1S56 she 
married A. C. Geer of Troy, N. Y., a graduate of 
Union College, a brainy young man, at the time 
a law partner of her brother-in-law Olin, and he 
remained in the practice till Olin was appointed judge 
of the Supreme Court of Washington, D. C, when 
he took a position in the Walter A. Wood Mowing 
and Reaping Machine Co., of Hoosick Falls, N. Y., 
as their secretary and commercial manager, and the 
company was a great success under his management. 
He resigned his office in 18S6 and organized the 
New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., having 
their factory at Long Island City, of which his eldest 
son is president, and which is doing a successful 

79 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



business. He has a nervous, energetic temperament 
and was one of the very best organizers of business 
companies I ever knew, and had the push to make 
the company he had an interest in a success. But 
he found the business strain too much for his nervous 
temperament and gave up active business, and pur- 
chased Mrs. Olin's house in Washington, which they 
have occupied for many winters past. Mrs. Geer is 
vice-president of the National Organization of the 
Daughters of the American Revolution. They spend 
their summers in their beautiful home at Hoosick 
Falls, N. Y. They had three sons. The youngest, 
Olin White, a bright young man of great promise, 
died of fever while fitting for college. The eldest, 
Walter, is in business in New York city, president 
of the Terra Cotta Co. He married Mary, daughter 
of the late Orlando B. Potter of New York city. 
They have three sons, Olin Potter, Walter and 
Joseph White. Danforth Geer, who has the place 
his father once occupied in the Wood Company, 
married Amy Gay, daughter of the late Willard Gay 
of Troy, treasurer of the Wood Company up to the 
time of his death. They have one son and two. 
daughters. 



CHAPTER XI. 

SOME OF THE OLD HOUSES AND THEIR OCCUPANTS 
— INTERESTING CHARACTERS OF FORMER DAYS — 
A BURLY BLACKSMITH WHO WAS CONVERTED TO 
TEMPERANCE AND RELIGION — THE OLD MANSION 
HOUSE AND SOME OF ITS LANDLORDS — VARIOUS 
FACTS FROM MEMORY'S STORE-HOUSE. 

In my last chapter I closed up my boyhood recol- 
lections of the Buxton family from the starting point. 
The last two chapters may seem a little egotistical, 
and they probably were, but it was no more than 
just to the family who came out of that quaint old 
house described in my first chapter. I shall now 
take up my recollections of the location of the houses 
in the village and of some of the families who occu- 
pied them some sixty years or more ago. 

The house standing on house lot No. 12, just west 
of Hemlock Brook, Dr. Perry says was built and 
occupied by Dr. Jacob Meack, that he had five 
daughters, all of them marrying in town, two of 
them William and Reuben Young of South Wil- 
liamstown, one John Kilborn, who afterwards occu- 
pied the doctor's homestead, and one married a man 
by name of Younger, who built his house on the 
north part of house lot No. 12. Of her John R. 
Bulkley said when she died: " I am glad she is 
81 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



dead, as she knew and would tell the age of every 
person in town." 

The Dr. Meack place was a one-story house with 
cellar kitchen when John Kilborn owned and occu- 
pied it. Within a few years it has been remodeled 
by Barney Manion, who now owns and occupies the 
place. Kilborn had a son and daughter, Fred and 
Marcia. Fred was feeble-minded and had the St. 
Vitus' dance. I remember his coming to my father's 
every spring to see the calves. My mother and Mrs. 
Kilborn were great friends and she always treated 
Fred to a good lunch. Mrs. Kilborn died some 
years before her husband's death. He was very deaf 
for many years the latter part of his life. In his 
last sickness Marshall Sanders and I were called 
upon to watch with him. As there were no trained 
nurses in those early days, the neighbors had to care 
for the sick. Kilborn had a small boy living with 
him by the name of Bill Cutler, who would roll 
himself up in a buffalo robe and camp on the floor, 
and at the proper time would give the old man his 
medicine. When he took it, it not being agreeable 
to the taste, the old man would scold and shake his 
head and Bill would laugh. Marcia was an old maid 
and indulged in opium and was flighty, and when 
she retired we could hear her putting nails over the 
latch of her door. At the same time we had more 
reason to fear her than she had us. She lived many 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



years after the death of her father, and after she 
exhausted the property left her she was cared for by 
the Congregational Church, of which she was a 
member. I tried to get her into the Old Ladies' 
Home in Boston, but it was full of those who had 
a claim upon it in the eastern part of the state and I 
didn't succeed. She lived to a good old age. 

East of the brook stood a one-story house and a 
carding and cloth mill a short distance below on the 
rocks, occupied in my boyhood by Harry Baker, 
whose wife was the sister of Mrs. J. H. Hosford 
and a widow when she married Baker, with two 
beautiful daughters, as I remember, by her former 
marriage. Thatcher Piatt after Baker lived there 
and ran the mill. His wife was a cousin of H. B. 
Curtis, a beautiful woman as I remember her. A 
man by the name of Green, lived and died there. 
Jasper Adams of North Adams once occupied this 
house. Arnold Maynard lived and died there and 
his beautiful family of girls were brought up and 
married from that house. He remodeled the house 
some, but it remains for Mrs. Bulkley Wheeler, who 
purchased the place of Mrs. Maynard, to make the 
old house one of prepossessing appearance and con- 
venience, standing by the brookside. The old mill 
long ago disappeared. Maynard when he owned 
the place built a small house east of this. The first 
person I remember occupying it was Hibbard, son 

83 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



of Elder Hibbard, and a brother of Mrs. James 
Bridges. His wife died there and Frances Sanders 
and I watched one night with her remains while 
Hibbard slept and snored on a lounge in the same 
room. 

The next building east was James Noble's black- 
smith shop, his one-story house standing just east, 
which was occupied by his father before him. James 
drank heavily and was beside himself when intoxi- 
cated, and would abuse his best friend. I have seen 
him parade on his old white horse many a time. In 
1840 he built a new shop. Being in the Washing- 
tonian times, a reformed drunkard came here to 
lecture on temperance, and he spent days sitting on 
the timber Uncle Jim was framing for his shop, trying 
to persuade him to become a sober man and sign the 
pledge. He did sign the pledge and soon after 
united with the Congregational Church, and from 
that day to the day of his death many years after he. 
was a sober christian man, perfectly honest and kind. 
After he reformed he put up his shop and raised his 
house up another story. Some few years after the 
temperance lecturer came on a visit to Noble with 
his wife and was entertained by him and his mother 
and sisters in a sumptuous manner. Being a bachelor, 
he made a home for his mother and sisters and left 
quite a little property for his sisters at his death. 

The next house, Robert Noble, brother of James, 

84 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



lived in. When the Whitmans built a new store, 
Robert Noble purchased the old Whitman gambrel- 
roof store and moved it on to this site and fitted it 
up for a dwelling, and it now forms the west part of 
the house of Mrs. Truman Cole. The next house 
east is the house remodeled by Dr. Belden, now 
occupied by Mrs. J. H. Hosford and S. B. Kellogg. 
In my youthful days it was owned and occupied by 
William Bridges and Deacon Smedley. In 1850, 
when my classmate Sanders was in the Auburn 
Theological Seminary preparing for the ministry, 
having decided to go on a mission, and was casting 
around for some nice girl to accompany him, he 
wrote me he was coming east on a little business 
that must be attended to, but did not tell me his 
business ; but I found out afterwards it was to see 
a young lady he hoped to persuade to go on a mis- 
sion. In the meantime Deacon Smedley was travel- 
ing through the county and stopped at Peru, where 
the Rev. Knight was the settled minister, and the 
minister asked him if he knew a young man by the 
name of Sanders in Williamstown, and what kind of 
a young man he was. (It was his daughter Sanders 
came east to see.) The deacon's answer was one of 
the best. He said Sanders and young Danforth 
passed and repassed his house six times a day for 
four years from the college to their homes and ' ' they 
never stoned my boys or committed depredations 

85 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



on my fruit trees." In 1851 Sanders and Miss 
Knight were married, went to the Ceylon mission 
and their labors in that field ended with their lives. 
The next building east on Main Street was a 
small office located near the sidewalk where the 
drive enters from Main Street to the Kappa Alpha 
Lodge, and was occupied by Dr. Sabin and Dr. 
Samuel Smith for an office. On the site of the 
Kappa Alpha Lodge stood an old gambrel-roof 
house built by someone unknown to the writer, 
about the time the Mrs. Benjamin house was built 
on the opposite side of the street, being of the same 
style of architecture. In the fifties H. B. Curtis 
purchased this house of Arnold Maynard and re- 
modeled the same, and it is the same house improved 
now occupied by Mrs. Hart on South Street. The 
next building east which came up to the walk on the 
south was Starkweather's store, which was occupied 
by a man by the name of Sutton. He lived in the 
Benjamin house when he committed suicide. He 
was the father of the late Mrs. Drake Mills of New 
York, whose remains were buried in his lot in the 
old cemetery. After him Henry Brown lived in the 
gambrel-roof house west of it. He was appointed 
high sheriff of the county and moved to Pittsfield. 
Tutor Coffin lived in this house in 1842. The tutor's 
room was in the fourth story of West College, near 
Sanders' and my rooms. In those college days 
S6 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



morning prayers were held at six o'clock the year 
round, and from prayers we went to the recitation 
room. Tutor Coffin used to come to his room in 
college about five o'clock in the morning and start his 
fire and then come into our room and warm, and we 
would thaw out the tutor and he would recipro- 
cate by reading the hard passages in our lessons to 
us. This store was owned by William Starkweather, 
who traded many years in it. He lived in a large 
two-story house on North Street, near where the 
"White Elephant" house now stands. He owned 
much land west and north, extending over on the hill 
where E. M. Jerome's house now stands. Terretts 
& Bro., from New York city opened a store in this 
building. The eldest of the brothers was a bachelor 
and built a house on the lot east of the new Con- 
gregational Church. It was rumored that he was 
to marry a Williamstown girl of much beauty, 
whose father then owned and occupied what is now 
the president's house. He got his cage built and 
arranged for the bird, but the old adage, "a bird in 
the hand is worth two in the bush," proved true in 
his case. He didn't catch the bird. The Terretts 
returned to New York and Prof. Ebenezer Kellogg 
purchased the house and spent the latter part of his 
life in it. Prof. John Tatlock purchased the house 
of the widow and much land north of this house, 
and moved it back and set it up where the Sigma 

S7 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 

Thi house stands. He sold to the Sigma Phi 
Society and they repaired it, and in a few years after 
sold it to C. R. Taft, who moved it to his lot on 
South Street, and it is now owned by Mrs. John B. 
Kellogg. The society built a magnificent club 
house on the old foundation, which was destroyed 
by fire January 7, 1894. On that site the society has 
erected a superb new club house from the materials 
of the Old Patroon Manor House of Albany. 

But to return to the old store where Starkweather 
traded. There was a story current in the village 
that he prided himself with a correct knowledge of 
the different kinds of woods. Todd, a shrewd Old 
colored man who dwelt in the White Oaks, made 
some basswood ax helves and sold them to Stark- 
weather for walnut helves. After the building ceased 
to be used as a store it was used for rooms and 
shops. Hanson, the harness maker, had his shop 
in this building for some years. The late Thomas 
Mole worked for Hanson in this shop when he first 
came to town. George W. Alford had his shop in 
tliis building. He built the house east of the Man- 
sion House, now owned by the Bullock estate, and 
moved from here to Adams. About '52 or '53 
Thomas Carpenter left his farm on the Northwest 
hill, purchased the old store and moved and set it 
up on one of the house lots west, and it formed the 
main part of the house that was lately purchased by 
S3 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



II. T. Trocter of Mrs. J. II. Hosford, which was 
taken down and the site cleaned up to make room 
for his palatial house. East and across North Street 
stood the old Mansion House, which was owned and 
kept as a public house by various persons at various 
times. It must have been built about 1780. A 
man by the name of Putnam was one of the first 
landlords, followed by Ware & Sylvester and William 
B. Cooley, who afterwards owned and kept the 
Berkshire House in Pittsfield many years. William 
Waterman owned the house and lots and traded it 
with John Hickox for his Bee Hill farm and kept 
the house. Many others tried their hand at money- 
making in this house. The last landlord in the old 
house was the late A. G. Bailey. The old house 
burned down in 1S70, and in 1873 the present house, 
now called The Greylock, was erected by a corpora- 
tion, and is now owned by the estate of the late Col. 
A. 1). Bullock. The next building east was Noah 
Cook's shop (called Noah's ark) in the upper room of 
which Noah pounded the last and drew the waxed end 
and expounded philosophy for and to his customers 
many years. Laura Waters occupied the lower 
room some years for a millinery shop. Mahitable 
Whelden, a tailoress, occupied it some years and 
measured the boys for their coats and trousers, and 
sewed and mended for the students. East, and close 
to Noah's ark, which disappeared some years ago, 
89 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



stands Dr. Mather's house, which was occupied 
many years by Mrs. Charles Sabin and her family. 
She was a daughter of Deacon Taft. The next 
house east, owned by B. F. Mather, in the forties, 
was occupied by Harry Johnson, a clerk in B. F. 
Mather's store. In the fifties it was occupied by 
the Rev. Horsington, a retired missionary who sup- 
plied the Congregational Church pulpit some few 
years. Mrs. S. J. Safford occupied this house and 
had her school of little ones in the Dr. Mather house. 
The next east is the Mather store, the front of which 
was built by Orrin Kellogg and B. F. Mather in 
the thirties. Kellogg and Mather as co-partners 
traded some years in this store, when they dissolved 
partnership and Kellogg moved to Cambridge, N. Y. 
Mather enlarged the store at different times and 
carried on mercantile business there up to the time 
of his death. 

The next house east of this was Deacon Taft's, 
where he lived and died. Dr. Shepard, minister of 
Lenox, and vice-president of Williams College, mar- 
ried his widow. The deacon had many wives, but 
only one widow. There was a ten-feet driveway 
between the store and this house. After the deacon's 
death Mather purchased the house and rented it 
some years. Nathaniel Waterman lived there in 
'44, '45 and '46, and his only son died there, a 
promising young man in his junior year in college. 
90 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Tie had one sister, a lovely girl, who was my boyish 
admiration. Afterwards it was occupied many years 
by Mrs. Samuel Tyler. After she left it Mather 
took down the house and enlarged his home place 
situated next east, and also his store. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE WHITMANS AND THEIR STORE — A RELIGIOUS 
WOMAN AND HER COLORED SERVANT — EFFECT 
OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING — THE HOUSE OCCUPIED 
BY PRESIDENT CARTER — HOW D. W. SLOANE 
HAPPENED TO GO WEST — FEW MEN NOW LIKE 
MARK AND ALBERT HOPKINS — AMASA SHATTUCK 
IN CHURCH. 

The next house east of the Deacon Taft house 
the late B. F. Mather purchased when he commenced 
trade here, and afterwards remodeled it. In my 
boyhood days it was occupied by Rev. Mr. King, 
minister of the church, who, if I remember right, 
died in this house in about three years after his 
settlement. The next house east is known as the 
Whitman house, now owned and occupied by Dr. 
L. D. Woodbridge. The west part of the house, 
Dr. Perry in his book says, was built by Josiah 
Ilorsford and was purchased by the Whitmans about 
1S00. Timothy and John Whitman came from 
Hartford, Conn., and were merchants. Their store 
stood where the east part of the house now stands 
and was connected with the house. They were 
successful merchants, had a large trade from the 
surrounding towns and accumulated much wealth. 
92 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Their wives were sisters, also sisters of Mrs. Ben- 
jamin, who lived in the old house, now gone, south 
of the old church site. They were all excellent 
women. Timothy had one child, a daughter, a 
beautiful girl who married the late Prof. Lasell. 
John had two children, a daughter and son. Dr. 
H. L. Sabin married the daughter, who lived but a 
short time after their marriage. Seymour, the son, 
occupied the old home and carried on the mercantile 
business in the same old store many years. He had 
one son and two daughters. The son, a graduate 
of the college in the class of 1855, studied theology 
and is settled in the west. The eldest daughter 
married John Tatlock 2d, a graduate in the class of 
1S56, and who for some years was settled over Con- 
gregational Church in Hoosick Falls, N. Y. The 
youngest daughter married a German professor, now 
in Harvard College. The mother of Seymour was 
a deeply religious woman. An old colored man by 
the name of Asahel Foot (one of the freed New 
York slaves claimed to have been one cf the old 
Patroon servants) used to work for the Whitmans 
and the good women used to instruct Asahel and 
talk to him much on religious subjects, and Asahel 
thought himself good and sure for the kingdom, 
having been taught there was no distinction in color 
there and that all were equal. Asahel came into the 
house one cold winter morning when Mrs. Whitman 

93 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



said: "It is very cold, Asahel." "Very" said 
Asahel, "but, Mrs. Whitman, we have only a few 
more days here below, and we shall find it very 
different when we are walking the streets of the new 
Jerusalem arm in arm together there." 

The next building east was the old academy, a 
two-story brick building erected by a corporation, 
and which afterwards came into the Whitmans' 
hands. The upper rooms were used for school pur- 
poses and the lower rooms for offices and shops. 
Graves, the tailor, used it for his shop and Judge 
Daniel N. Dewey had his office in this building. 
The writer opened his office there in 1851, and 
Banister printed the Advocate in this building, the 
paper having a short life. In those days it was 
meadow land between the store and this building. 
In the upper rooms of the building were educated 
most of the boys and girls of Williamstown in those 
early days in studies above the district school. 

The next house east, which is occupied by Presi- 
dent Carter, was built by Samuel Sloane and, at that 
time, was the most magnificent house in town, which 
was inherited by his son, Douglass W. Sloane, a 
graduate of the college in the class of 1803. D. W. 
was a lawyer, but to add to his income he opened a 
private boarding school for boys. Having a large 
family of beautiful girls, it took quite an income to 
care for and keep them, and his property became 

94 



B V 1 1 00 1) R EM I N I SCENC ES. 



much involved, and while he was absent after boys 
for his school his creditors became alarmed at his long 
absence and sued and attached his property. At the 
same time he was on his way home with a number of 
boys for his school, but, hearing of the attachments 
of his creditors, and being a proud, sensitive man, he 
did not return to Williamstown, but went to Cleve- 
land, Ohio, to which place his family soon followed 
him. There his daughters married excellent business 
men. His widow visited here in the writer's remem- 
brance and claimed her thirds in the real estate of her 
husband. Prof. Lasell, a graduate of the college in 
the class of 1828, a fine looking man who married 
the beautiful Whitman girl, purchased of the creditors 
his fine house which then included house lots 44, 
46 and 48, to which he took his young wife. He 
was tutor, and afterwards professor of chemistry 
in college, and was the first man to set up an estab- 
lishment of horses and carriage in town, with a 
colored driver, to wit, Amos Deming. Some now 
living will remember those beautiful horses, they 
being the first docked horses that were brought into 
town. When Prof. Lasell left and built the Auburn- 
dale Female Seminary building at Auburndale, Mass., 
and opened a ladies' school there, Seymour Whitman 
purchased the place and moved there. Whitman sold 
the lot where the Congregational Church now stands 
to Giles Bardwell and William Walden. They built 

95 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



a store on the front of the lot and a double house 
back of the store and lived there. Bardwell sold his 
interest in the property to Prof. J. Tatlock, and the 
Congregational parish purchased the lot of them. 
The store was moved to Spring Street and is now 
known as the old post office block. The house was 
moved and set up on Spring Street and was one of 
the buildings burned last October. The Whitmans 
sold the rear of these lots to the Mission Park Asso- 
ciation, and a portion of the front of the lot east of 
the church lot to Prof. Tatlock, and the remainder, 
including the buildings, to Nathan Jackson, who 
made a gift deed of it to the college for the president's 
residence, and it has since been occupied by the presi- 
dent of the college. The next house east was Prof. 
Kellogg's house, built by Terrett, which Prof. Tatlock 
purchased and moved back to the site of the Sigma 
Phi house. The next house east was the old presi- 
dent's house on lot fifty, which was occupied by Dr. 
Griffin during his presidency, and later by Dr. Mark 
Hopkins until the Lasell house was purchased by 
Jackson, when he moved and lived there, and when 
he resigned the presidency of the college a house was 
built for the good old doctor near the park. He left 
the president's house and occupied this, and here he 
lived and died. The house is still occupied by his 
widow and youngest daughter. I don't know but 
God makes as good and bright men in these latter 
96 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



days as Mark and Albert Hopkins, but if so they 
must be dwarfed in their bringing up, or die young, 
as we don't glean any knowledge of them or the 
fruits of their labors. This old president's house 
the year College Hall was built, was moved and set 
up north of the hall and is now occupied by Prof. 
Safford, and a Memorial Hall to the dear old doctor 
has been built by the alumni of the college on the 
site of the old house, which is an appropriate monu- 
ment to the man's memory, who labored and taught 
till he was not, for the Lord took him. 

The next building east was Griffin Hall, called in 
my young days " College Chapel," where the students 
congregated early in the morning and late in the 
afternoon for prayers, and Wednesday afternoons to 
exhibit their oratory, and junior and senior years to 
tell the professor in chemistry what they knew about 
that study, and let Dr. Hopkins see how deficient 
they were in his department. The next building 
under the hill was the office of Judge Dewey, treas- 
urer of the college from 1830 to 1859, and where the 
students then resorted to pay their bills. The next 
east was the Judge's house built by Daniel Day, now 
owned and occupied by the D. U. Society, lately 
injured by fire and raised up and improved by the 
society. One of Day's daughters married a Noble, 
who died a short time after their marriage leaving her 
a widow with one daughter, known to us as Mrs. 

97 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Brewster, the mother of Carrie Brewster. Mrs. Noble 
soon after married Gershom Bulkley of South Wil- 
liamstown, who owned and occupied the farm that 
the late Daniel Phelps purchased of Eber Sherman's 
heirs. At Bulkley's death the widow sold the farm 
and purchased the house on South Street of Orrin 
Kellogg, now owned and remodeled by Mrs. Ward. 
She had many bright sons and daughters by this 
second marriage, among them George W. , a graduate 
of the college in the class of 1824, and Gershom, 
who was in the class of 1836, but did not graduate. 
Mrs. Brewster lived and died at her mother's house, 
as also did her aunt Skinner, the widow of Benjamin 
Skinner. 

Next east of the Dewey house stood a house 
occupied many years by Sumner Southworth, with a 
front projecting to the sidewalk. The lower room 
was occupied at one time by Johnson as a tailor shop, 
and later by Sam, the barber. The upper room was 
occupied by Lyman C. Thayer for his law office. 
After him Lucius Smith had his law office in this 
room In the sixties Southworth moved this house 
off and erected his new house on this site. The 
old house, remodeled, is where D. J. Neyland now 
lives, and the office part is the George Scott house. 

The next house on lot 56 was the late James M. 
Waterman residence, built by Richard Stratton, (Dr. 
Perry's book), and is one of the oldest houses in 
98 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



town. Waterman died last May. He was a kind, 
noble man and a good, fast friend. He and the 
writer were companions all their younger days, and 
in manhood were the best of friends and were only 
divided in politics. He was a genial companion 
and when he came into my office it was always an 
occasion for some fun and we always had it, and 
when he died I felt a brother had gone, and I daily 
feel the loss of this dear friend. His widow died this 
February. They leave one son, a business man in 
Troy, N. Y. This house was the home of Gershom 
G. Bulkley, Caleb Brown and Isaac Latham at 
different times. Brown built the brick store east of 
his house, where he carried on mercantile business. 
This store building was purchased a few years ago 
by the late Joseph White and moved back from the 
walk. The next house east was built by Daniel 
Noble, who was a lawyer and many years treasurer 
of the college, and the ownership of which was in the 
family till 1859, when it was purchased by the late 
Joseph White and repaired. There must have been 
an old house on this site when Noble built, which must 
have been repaired by him and a new main house 
built in front, as the back or ell part of the house was 
much older than the front or main part. Mr. White 
took that part of the house down when he purchased 
and built a new ell. The eldest daughter, a very 
beautiful girl, married Prof. Porter, who lived but a 

99 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



few years and she was left a widow with one daughter, 
who is the wife of George F. Betts of New York 
city. Some time after Mr. Porter's death she married 
Charles Stoddard, a noble christian man and mer- 
chant of Boston. Both have passed away, leaving 
one son, Rev. Charles A. Stoddard of New York, 
the editor of the New York Observer, who has built 
a beautiful summer residence on land once owned 
by his great-grandfather, Solomon Wolcott. The 
youngest of the Noble girls, whom I remember as 
a very interesting, pretty girl, married a brother of 
Charles Stoddard and went to Glasgow, Scotland, 
many years ago. She and her husband and a daughter 
visited the old home some few years ago and I took 
tea with them at my sister's, Mrs. Joseph White's, 
in the house which was the home of Mrs. Stod- 
dard's girlhood. She is dead, and I know of but one 
of the Noble family now living, Solomon, a lawyer 
living in Long Island City. The Noble office stood 
east of the sidewalk and was moved by Mr. White 
east near Dr. Smith's, and there the students came 
for several years to pay their term bills. Some four 
years ago this gave place to Clarence M. Smith's fine 
residence. The next east is the brick house of Dr. 
A. M. Smith, built by his father, Dr. Samuel Smith, 
in 1 817, a long time physician of this town, who 
married a daughter of Dr. Towner, raised a large 
family, most of them daughters, who were said to be 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



very fine looking and great singers. These girls all 
married graduates of the college and are all gone. 
None of the family is left but Dr. A. M. Smith. Dr. 
Smith's office stood east of the house close to the side- 
walk. He moved it to the west of the house and 
built a new front. The next house east was the 
Amasa Shattuck house. He was a cabinet-maker, and 
his shop was on the corner of Shattuck Lane, so 
called, and Main Street. Amasa was a very large 
man, and I remember when he came into his pew in 
church with his long cloak, he would turn around 
and take a look into singers' gallery, then wrap 
himself up in his cloak, face the pulpit and sit down 
ready for the sermon. He never failed in these move- 
ments. His wife was sister to Dennis Smith and 
Mrs. Town. They had one daughter, Mary, and 
many sons, now all dead. The old house was divided, 
moved and set up on Depot Street, and the old shop 
now does duty as a cabinet shop, occupied by E. E. 
Evens, and the Hon. James White's house now 
occupies the old site. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MORE ABOUT SOME OF THE OLD HOUSES AND THOSE 
WHO OCCUPIED THEM — THE PLACE WHERE JAMES 
FISK, FATHER OF THE LATiT JAMES FISK, JR., USED 
TO LIVE— THE DEACON FOOTE PLACE AND HOW 
ITS OWNER CAME BACK FROM CALIFORNIA TO DIE 
THERE — OTHER RECOLLECTIONS. 

In those early days there were but two houses on 
the west side of Shattuck Lane from Main Street to 
the river, one called the yellow house, now owned 
and occupied by Miss Orton, many years ago owned 
by Dr. Sabin and occupied by his father, and the 
Dick Lama house, now occupied by Thomas Nevell. 
On the east side was a farm house near where the 
Williamstown Manufacturing Company's store now 
stands. In my very early days my father moved a 
small building from there which was used as a cheese 
house in connection with the farm house. I drove 
one pair of the oxen which helped draw the building 
and it was set up in Prattville just west of the Pratt 
house, and many years afterwards was purchased by 
John Sherman and was moved by him into his yard, 
under the elm tree south of his house, but it has 
now disappeared. The next house east on north 
side of Main Street is the house occupied by Mrs. 
John M. Cole. It was owned and occupied by 
102 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Deodatus Noble, and by him sold to Israel Cole by 
deed dated 1836. In 1831 Deodatus Noble sold to 
Faxton and Bulkley the factory lot described as 
follows : Beginning one rod from the abutment of 
the bridge, as it then stood near the Walley house, 
thence northerly down the river as it then ran, 
fifteen rods, thence westerly to the corner of Noble's 
garden ; thence westerly on Noble's garden to Main 
Street ; thence southerly on Main Street to the road ; 
thence on the road to the first mentioned bound. 
The front part of this lot was once occupied by 
Faxon with a puddling furnace. The lot was 
purchased soon after by Caleb Turner of North 
Adams, who built the wooden part of the factory 
and ran the mill for some years, when he sold the 
factory and lot to Caleb Brown, who built the 
stone front to the mill. Afterwards it came into 
South worth, Walley and Peter Blackinton's hands. 
Blackinton occupied the house at the foot of the hill 
and Walley the house on the brink of the mill yard. 
Then the river ran clear up to the Walley house, 
and where the stone bank wall now is. The flood 
of 1869 changed the course of the river east and 
took off the bridge and some twenty feet of the long 
house now standing east of the river, and the town 
was under the necessity of building the bridge 
further east. The next house east was the Smedley 
house, being built in 1772 by Nehemiah Smedley, 
103 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and some four generations of his descendants have 
occupied it, and the present owner and occupant is 
our genial "all trade" man, B. F. Bridges, select- 
man and great-grandson of the original Nehemiah 
Smedley. Dr. Perry's book contains the history of 
this house. 

The next house east, now occupied by F. C. 
Markham, was built by Elijah Smedley and was 
occupied by his family, and afterwards by his son- 
in-law, Asahel Foote, who kept a private school for 
many years and was our famous nursery man, and 
who set out a fine young orchard. His wife died 
and was buried from this house. Deacon Foote 
moved with his two unmarried daughters to Cali- 
fornia in his old age, but returned in a few years, 
and in a few weeks after he came back to his old 
home he died and was buried from it. The daughters 
sold the place to Markham, who has greatly im- 
proved it, and it is now a house of beauty. The 
daughters returned to Pasadena, Cal., sold their 
place there at a great advance and went further south 
in California and purchased again. Next east was 
the Daniel Thayer house. Parts of the cellar and 
stones are now visible. Lyman C. Thayer and the 
Hon. Shepard Thayer of North Adams were born 
in this house. Thayer sold it to Anson Dunsett, 
father of Charles and Mary Dunsett. He did 
carting business for the merchants from Troy to 
104 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Williamstown, and died in this house, which long ago 
disappeared. Across the road stood a house and a 
blacksmith shop occupied by a man by the name of 
Peabody, and just west of this house and shop stood 
a house once occupied by James Fisk, the great 
American peddler, with fancy cart and four white, 
well-groomed horses. He was the father of Jim risk, 
of Wall Street and Erie railroad notoriety. These 
buildings have disappeared, except one that was 
remodeled and owned by Mrs. William Lawler. The 
next house is the Samuel Kellogg house. In my 
young days it was owned and occupied by Manning 
Brown, father of Lawyer Timothy Brown of Spring- 
field. F. G. Smedley, a lawyer of New York city 
and a graduate of the college in the class of 1864, 
now owns the farm and comes with his cultured 
family here for the summer. The next is the place 
of Ira Ford, who married one of Bissell Sher- 
man's daughters. After Ford's death the widow 
remodeled the house, and it is now occupied by 
S. H. Phelps. The next house is the brick-yard 
house, owned and occupied many years by Rufus 
Temple. After his death it went into other hands 
and is now owned by Mathew Owens' estate. On 
the other side of the road, where now is the house 
owned and occupied by Geo. P. Carpenter, stood a 
one-story house with a cellar kitchen, which in the 
early days was owned and occupied by Daniel Day, 

105 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



who sold the place to W. Bissell Sherman, and it 
was occupied by his son William, who was a good 
farmer and bright, but when full would shake hands 
with you and exclaim, "Damn a nigger!" The 
farm came into the hands of his sons at William's 
death, and Chauncey and Eber divided the farm. 
Chauncey thought the old house not quite good 
enough for him, and, desiring to excel William 
Blackinton in the erection of a house, took down the 
old house and erected the present fine house on the 
old site, with the result that usually follows such 
outgoes. Eber built a very nice, suitable house on 
his part of the farm, now owned and occupied by 
Allen Phelps. Just over the line in Adams stood 
the Truman Paul house, which is now owned and 
occupied by William Gove. Though over the line 
in Adams, Williamstown claimed the Paul family, 
as they came to the Williamstown church. They 
had a son and daughter. The son was in the regular 
army and the daughter is a Mrs. Goodrich of North 
Adams. 

The Ebenezer Stratton house stood on the west 
side of the road leading south from the F. C. Mark- 
ham place. He was one of the first settlers and was 
a very influential man in the community. His old 
house has disappeared. The next house west is the 
William Hall place, now owned and occupied by 
Mrs. Ford. Next west of that is the carriage shop 
1 06 



Boyhood Reminiscenxes. 



of Mrs. Bates, built by H. C. Ely, and west is the 
house. The next house was built on the Walley 
property and is occupied by Luke Madden. Then 
crossing the Green River was Elisha Bingham's shoe 
shop, now gone, but the Bingham house is still 
standing, occupied by Cloe, his daughter, west of 
which is the Boardman house on the hill, remodeled 
and now owned by Jonathan Benjamin. West of 
this is Pork Lane, so called, on which two houses 
are standing of the old times, which used to lead 
down to Duncan's grist mill, located near the dam. 
Next west on Main Street is the Bissell Sherman 
house, front built in 1796 on to the old house which 
does duty in the rear. West of this is the Chris- 
topher Penniman house, remodeled by Mrs. Harvey 
Penniman, being an old-time, one-story house, and 
occupied many years by the Penniman family. Chris- 
topher was the old-time butcher, and fed the com- 
munity with veal in the spring of the year till they 
were all blatant. The place has lately been pur- 
chased by C. B. Cook and much improved by him. 
Next west was the school-house known as the White 
school-house, in which the children of that part of 
the village were educated ; now doing duty as a meat 
market. The brick house next west was built by 
Samuel Duncan, and after him was owned and occu- 
pied by Eber Sherman, and now by his daughter. 
The next house west, on the corner of Water Street, 
107 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



is the house of Solomon Bulkley, many years deputy 
sheriff, who had a family of very bright daughters 
and two sons, the eldest son a physician in Wash- 
ington, D. C. The place afterwards came into the 
hands of Dr. N. H. Griffin, whose wife was a 
Bulkley. After he resigned his professorship in the 
college he enlarged the house and for many years 
had a private school. After his decease, his sons 
having left to fill responsible positions elsewhere, the 
widow and only daughter left for the bachelor son's 
home in Springfield, and the old homestead is now 
owned by Fred Moore, the lumber and coal mer- 
chant. On the next corner, across Water Street, 
stood the old Union House, said to have been built 
by David Noble. This was a tavern of the old 
times, occupied in my boyhood days by William 
Waterman. J. H. Hosford owned and occupied it 
many years. It was moved by Sumner Southworth 
back of the Methodist Church, where Waterman & 
Moore's lumber yard now is, and rented to families, 
but falling in decay, it was condemned by the Board 
of Health and torn down. West of this is the Sher- 
man hardware store, which was built many years ago. 
John Wright traded in this store in the twenties. 
He left here and went to Chicago, when it was a 
mere hamlet and purchased much land there. The 
city grew rapidly and taxes increased and debts 
pressed upon him so heavily he succumbed to them, 
10S 



Boyhood Reminiscences, 

but the real estate he saved, in after years, made his 
family wealthy. The Methodist society held their 
meetings in the hall over this store many years till 
they built the church, which, remodeled, is now 
Waterman & Moore's office and opera house. The 
church held their Sunday services in the upper room. 
The building had a basement in which they held 
their evening meetings. One of the ministers of the 
church wanted to hold the evening meetings in the 
upper room, but some of the trustees objected and 
they continued to meet in the basement. The min- 
ister was rather a free, outspoken man, and one 
Sunday evening it was reported that he in his open- 
ing prayer " thanked God that they had a place for 
worship, even if it was half under ground." 

West of the store is a long house, built about the 
same time by David Noble and occupied by Wright 
when he traded in the store. Dr. Duncan built the 
little office. Next house was owned and occupied 
by Dr. E. Emmons, the old-time physician and 
geologist. Prof. Albert Hopkins, of sacred memory, 
purchased this place of the doctor and lived and died 
there, and death to him was like stepping out of one 
room into another, as he expressed it in his last sick- 
ness. Next was the old East College, which burned 
down in 1840. The next year the present building 
was erected on the old site, and the South College 
was put up some years before the old observatory 
109 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



was built. On the rock near where the chapel now 
stands stood a dwelling house, occupied by Prof. 
Kellogg and afterwards by Prof. Joseph Alden. 
This was taken down to make room for the present 
chapel. Next was a house where Morgan Hall now 
stands, sold by Thomas Mole to the college. It 
was one of the old landmarks and had sheltered 
many different families and trades. It was once 
occupied by a hatter, a tailor, and was the home for 
some years of the Singer sisters, milliners and dress- 
makers for the Williamstown girls. This house was 
moved by the college to College Place and is occu- 
pied as a dwelling. Dr. Alden built a house just 
west of this, which was purchased by the college and 
moved and set up south of its old location, and is 
now occupied by one of the professors. West Col- 
lege, the old landmark, was built in 1790 for a free 
school. In 1793 a charter was obtained for a college, 
and three stories were added to the building, and it 
stands there an old monument to education. In the 
olden times a walk ran through the centre of the 
building. In the fifties the building was thoroughly 
repaired as to its interior and the walks changed to 
each end. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A QUICK-TEMPERED BUT A GOOD-HEARTED MAN — 
AN OLD-TIME GRADUATION INCIDENT : ROUSED 
FROM A DRUNKEN STUPOR TO DELIVER THE 
VALEDICTORY, A STUDENT MAKES A BRILLIANT 
IMPROMPTU EFFORT — ELI PORTER AND HIS PECU- 
LIARITIES — A STUDENT WHO KNEW EVERYBODY. 

In my last chapter I closed with old West College, 
that grand monument of education. Kellogg Hall 
was named for Prof. Kellogg. It was built in the 
forties and used for recitation rooms and dormitory 
purposes. The dwelling house west was built by 
S. V. R. Hoxsey, located where the Chi Psi Lodge 
now stands. When Hoxsey Street was opened a few 
years ago the house was moved on to this street and 
is now occupied by H. B. Curtis. Mrs. Hoxsey, 
who was a sister of Mr. Curtis, a quiet, even-tem- 
pered noble woman, died in this house a few years 
ago. Hoxsey was an enterprising man, energetic, 
with a quick, fiery temper, very unreasonable when 
the mad was on, but quickly over it, good-hearted 
and would do anything for a friend. He built much 
in the village, opened Spring Street for building 
lots, built a large addition to the old Mansion House 
when he owned it. Next west stood Benjamin Skin- 
ner's house, where he lived many years. He married 
Mrs. Train, whose maiden name was Rachel 
in 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Simonds, the first child born in Williarastown, 
daughter of Col. Simonds. From this union there 
were four sons and three daughters. The daughters 
were very bright and handsome. One of these girls 
married Samuel Austin Talcott, a graduate of the 
college in the class of 1806, one of the brightest and 
most talented young men that ever graduated from 
Williams College, and, I am under the necessity of 
recording, rather dissipated. He was valedictorian 
of his class, and his classmates commencement day 
besought him not to drink anything intoxicating till 
after he had delivered his address to the class. A 
short time before his time came for the stage he 
wasn't in the church, and they found him asleep in 
the old Mansion House. They awoke him and said 
he had but few minutes before he was to be on the 
stage to deliver his address. He got up, dashed his 
head into a bowl of water, straightened out his hair, 
started for the church and went upon the stage to 
address his class. He wandered from his prepared 
address, but gave a valedictory that for eloquence 
was never equaled in the old church before or since. 
The writer had this from one who was present and 
heard the address. When the president handed him 
his diploma Talcott said to him : " I presume you 
would not have presented to me this degree if you 
knew that black-eyed girl up in yonder gallery was my 
wife." They were married before he graduated, but 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



it was not made public. He chose the profession of 
the law and was at one time attorney-general of the 
state of New York. The late Gov. Briggs, when in 
Congress, delivered a temperance address to the col- 
lege students in the old chapel, in which he spoke of 
Talcott being a graduate of the college, and said he 
came to Washington to argue a case before the 
supreme court, and the case had to be continued 
three days for him to recover from a debauch ; and 
when he came before the court he argued the case 
with such power and eloquence as to astonish the 
judges of the court. They could not understand how 
a man with such brilliancy could so fall, and come 
up "clothed in his right mind" with his reason- 
ing powers so strong with arguments that carry 
conviction. This habit of intemperance fastened 
itself upon him while in college and prevented him 
from standing in the first rank with men of his 
generation. 

Austin E. Wing, a graduate of the college in the 
class of 1 8 14, married another of these daughters, 
became a lawyer and settled in Monroe, Mich. He 
must have been some connection of Talcott's, as he 
had Austin for his middle name. Wing had a son 
who graduated from the college in the class of 1840, 
named Talcott E. Wing. Two of Deacon Skinner's 
sons, Harry and William, never married and lived 
and died here. William in his latter days lived with 

113 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the Sabin girls at South Williamstown. In their 
young days the boys were somewhat dissipated. 
Samuel Skinner graduated from the college in the 
class of 1816, read law and settled in LeRoy, Genesee 
County, N. Y. My eldest brother was a law partner 
of his when he settled in LeRoy. He had a son, 
John B. Skinner, 2d, a graduate of the college in the 
class of 1842, a free-and-easy fellow who used to go 
fishing and was fond of a good time. He knew all 
the people in town and neighboring towns, and it 
was proverbial with the students that John knew 
every one. John was standing on the piazza of the 
old Mansion House with a number of the students 
one day in the spring of the year when they saw a 
man driving a horse hitched to an old lumber wagon, 
the man walking beside the wagon. One of the 
boys said, " I will bet the cigars for the crowd that 
John don't know that man." He drove up to the 
Mansion House. John stepped out and shook hands 
with the man, who greeted and smiled upon him. 
He proved to be a man from Readsboro, Vt., where 
John used to fish and stop at this man's house, 
and the man had come down into the town to market 
his maple sugar. John married a Miss Putnam, 
whose father was a lawyer of Batavia, N. Y., and 
who was a congressman from that district one term. 
Samuel Skinner had a line wife and a family of 
three sons and two daughters. The eldest daughter 
114 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



married Mr. Edson who was in the manufacturing- 
business at Scottsville, a short distance from LeRoy. 
I saw much of the Skinner family when living in 
LeRoy. I saw Mrs. Edson but once and I thought 
her a beautiful woman. At that time she had a 
number of pretty little daughters. Her husband 
dying young, she lived with a married daughter in 
Buffalo. Kitty, the other daughter, married James 
McClure of Albany, N. Y., a business man of that 
city. They had a son and daughter. The son died 
when a young man, which was a grievous blow to 
them, and the mother's black, curling hair whitened 
fast. 

John B. Skinner, a graduate of the college in the 
class of 1818, youngest son of Rachel Simonds 
Skinner, was a very talented man and fine lawyer. 
His first settlement was in Wyoming, N. Y. He 
afterwards moved to Buffalo. Dr. Perry speaks of 
him at length in his book. Deacon Skinner, after 
the death of his first wife, Rachel, married a Miss 
Noble, daughter of David Noble, and there was one 
son of this union, George, who graduated in 1827, 
and established himself in the law in Michigan. 
With him the mother lived after the death of her 
husband, till his death, when she returned to Williams- 
town and lived and died with Mrs. Gershom Bulkley. 
She was known and called by our people ' ' Aunt 
Skinner." The Skinner house burned down in the 

115 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



thirties and Thomas F. Hoxsey purchased the site 
and built thereon the double house with wings, 
known now as the Bardwell house. The wings were 
taken off by the Misses Bardwell and a large rear 
was built on to this house. Hoxsey had some 
"tony" daughters who persuaded him to leave his 
Buxton farm and live in the village. Hoxsey lived 
in the west tenement and died there. Dr. Alden for 
a time lived in the east tenement. It was into this 
house John Wells, a student in college, was taken 
after being struck by the Hoxsey 's with a club under 
some mistaken identity. At the time it was sup- 
posed to be very serious, but did not prove so, for 
afterwards Wells was one of the judges of the 
supreme court. 

The next house on Main Street was built by John 
S. Gray, who married sisters of Mrs. Seymour 
Whitman and Mrs. H. B. Curtis. At one time he 
was a partner of Whitman's in the mercantile busi- 
ness. Joseph H. Gray, who married Maria Dewey, 
now living in Boston, a retired merchant, was a 
clerk in his uncle's store. He and the writer were 
fast boy friends. Before the days of railroad through 
the tunnel Gray used to come from Boston here and 
the writer used to take him up to Cambridge, N, Y., 
there to take the stage on his journey to Salem to 
visit his mother. Once we upset and found our- 
selves under the fence, carriage and horse also. 
116 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



The next house west was Eli Porter's, and his old 
shop stood just east of the house. Eli worked for 
his uncle, Daniel Porter, maker and repairer of 
clocks. There are many of the old eight-day clocks 
in the families of the old inhabitants, manufactured 
by Daniel Porter, with his name upon them, which 
are very valuable as time-pieces and heirlooms. He 
had two children, a son and daughter. Royal 
Porter, the son, a fine looking, cultured man, died 
in the south, leaving a widow and one son, Edward. 
The widow married a Mr. Carouth of Boston. The 
daughter, Amelia, married a man by name of White, 
who was reported to be quite wealthy. There was 
one daughter from this union, but the marriage did 
not prove a happy one and she obtained a divorce 
from him and married Rev. Mr. Peabody. She died 
many years ago and her daughter married a Mr. 
Johnson of Lowell, and, dying some years ago, her 
remains were brought to Williamstown and interred 
in the lower cemetery lot. Eli Porter married his 
uncle's widow and took charge of the family. He 
was an excellent man and of a very equable temper, 
was a member of the Congregational Church, but 
always dressed like a Quaker — broad-brimmed hat, 
etc., always stood up in the church during prayers. 
He was a moderate man, never in a hurry, honest and 
true, owned quite a number of lots in the outskirts 
of the village, which he cultivated ; kept a horse 

117 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and two cows, never drove his horse out of the walk, 
which caused the remark of a citizen that he would 
not object to being a horse if he knew Eli Porter 
would own him. He lived many years after his 
wife's death in this house, and a short time before 
his death made a will giving most of his property to 
Edward Porter, the son of Royal and grandson of 
his wife. Dr. Duncan purchased the property and 
built a fine house on the site, using the old house as 
an ell. The old shop was moved west and set up 
on Main Street, and is occupied by Ann Sherman. 

The next house west was built by Graves, the 
tailor, and has passed through various owners' hands, 
and is now owned by Mrs. F. L. Walters. She sold 
the west part of the lot to the Alpha Delta Phi 
society, moved and set up the house on the east part 
of the lot, and it is rented by her, she and her 
daughter living in Albany. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE OLD KELLOGG HOUSE — MRS. BENJAMIN'S PRAYER- 
MEETINGS — THE OLD WHITE MEETING-HOUSE ON 
THE HILL — COMMENCEMENT IN THE OLDEN TIMES 
—THE SABIN PLACE — GLEN AVENUE. 

In the seventies the Alpha Delta Phi society built 
a club-house of stone, which not proving convenient 
was taken down last year and a new one of brick 
erected on the old site. The building next west, now 
called the Taconic Inn, was evolved from an old 
house known in olden times as the Doctor Samuel 
Porter house. Doctor Sabin once owned the place 
and lived there. He sold it to Major Hubbell and 
purchased the Samuel Bridges place, the house on 
which was built by Colonel Simonds when he kept 
the first public house opened in Williamstown. 
Hubbell sold to S. B. Kellogg, who enlarged it and 
kept a hotel known as the Kellogg House. He in 
turn sold to A. D. Bullock, who raised up the house 
and built an extended ell south and gave it the name 
of the Taconic Inn. At the time of writing, this 
house is being taken down by J. W. Bullock, and 
the annex is to be moved across the street and con- 
nected with the Greylock House. 

Next west stood a one-story house with a nice 
garden, owned by Mrs. Stebbens, who kept a board- 
ing house for the students for many years. This 
iig 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



was the Delmonico's of the village, where table board 
could be obtained for two dollars per week. Mrs. 
Stebbens was a widow with two children, a boy and 
a girl. Charles, the son, in his boyhood was a clerk 
in Henry Brown's store. The mother educated him 
and he graduated from the college in the class of 
1807, and settled as a lawyer in Cazenovia, New 
York, where he became a man of influence and ac- 
cumulated much wealth. The daughter married 
Doctor Sylvester, who with Mr. Ware at one time 
kept the old Mansion House (now the Greylock). At 
the time of the death of Mrs. Stebbens, Doctor and 
Mrs. Sylvester were living in her house and took 
charge of the boarding house. They had one son 
named Charles Stebbens Sylvester, who graduated 
with the salutatory oration (the second honor) in the 
class of 1846, the writer's own class. Sylvester, 
Sanders and I were examined for admission to col- 
lege together and were great friends throughout our 
college course. Sylvester was younger than most of 
the class and a great pet with all. His father died 
while he was in college and after his graduation the 
homestead was sold to James Bridges and by him 
was remodeled into a two-story house with an ell. 
Bridges moved to Pittsfield, and Thomas McMahon 
purchased the place and also the stage route to 
Adams, which he has continued to run since. 
Sylvester studied for the ministry at Auburn 
120 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Theological Seminary and was at one time settled at 
Spencertown, New York, and afterwards at Feeding; 
Hills, Mass., at which place he now lives. 

Crossing South Street we now come to the Delta 
Fsi house, where once stood the gambrel-roofed house 
of Mrs. Benjamin. This old house had a history. 
It was one of the first houses erected in Williamstown 
and according to Doctor Perry, was built by Nehe- 
miah Smedley. In my boyhood days it was owned 
and occupied by that good woman, Mrs. Benjamin. 
During her lifetime a prayer-meeting conducted by 
some of the students was held in her house every 
Saturday evening. In the sixties when repairing 
the old meeting-house on the hill, we worshipped in 
the chapel on Park Street. The Rev. Everard 
Kempshall, of Elizabeth, N. J., who was settled 
over Dr. Nicholas Murray's church was stopping 
at the Mansion House for two weeks. Mr. Ballard 
who was then our minister was absent and Mrs. 
Ballard got Mr. Kempshall to preach to the congre- 
gation in the afternoon and he gave us a fine sermon. 
In the course of his remarks he said : " In the first 
part of my college course I was an ungodly young 
man. One Saturday evening when passing Mrs. 
Benjamin's house, the singing from the prayer- 
meeting floated out to me on the street and affected 
me much. Passing on through the college grounds 
to my room in East College some one touched me on 
121 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the shoulder and said : ' Come with us, Kempshall, 
and we will do you good.' That was the voice of 
God to me through Professor Albert Hopkins, which 
changed my whole plan of life." 

The old white meeting-house opposite, in the 
middle of the street at the brow of the hill, was built 
in 1796 and burned down in 1866. Up to the time 
of the fire the commencement exercises of the college 
were all held in this church. In those days the com- 
mencement of the college came in August instead 
of June as at present. On the morning of com- 
mencement day the alumni used to form in procession 
at the old chapel (now Griffin Hall) with the band in 
the lead, the under-graduates next, with the alumni 
following, with the trustees and officers of the col- 
lege bringing up the rear. The procession moved 
up the south walk through the West College to the 
old meeting-house on the hill. The streets were 
lined with carriages, the horses prancing at the sound 
of the music, and the hill in front of the church was 
packed with human beings watching and waiting for 
the procession, as none but ladies were allowed in 
the church till the alumni arrived and took their 
seats. When the church was reached, while the band 
continued to play in the vestibule, the procession 
separated, and the trustees and alumni marched up 
two by two from the rear through the passage-way 
formed by the under-graduates. When the last of 
122 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the line of trustees and alumni had entered the 
church the fun began. The crowd would force in 
the ranks of the students and rush for the open 
doors, where stood Thomas Cox and Robert Noble, 
with their wands of office in their hands with which 
they would attempt, but in vain, to beat back the 
crowd. Those of the crowd who succeeded in gain- 
ing admission to the church would stop there but a 
short time, for the attraction to them was located 
outside to the west of the church, where were to be 
found the eating booths, the music, and the shows 
of all kinds which for the country people were the 
real commencement. 

The long one-story Centre school-house stood 
south of the old meeting-house on a narrow lot 
between Mrs. Benjamin's and Dr. Sabin's places. 
When the town afterwards purchased the Hosford 
brick store and fitted it up for a school-house, the 
old house and lot were sold to Sevillian Boardman, 
and Dr. Sabin gave him a lot on Glen Avenue and 
the old school-house was moved and set up there. 
Mrs. Boardman afterwards perished one winter night 
in a severe snow storm in passing from Main Street 
to her house. The second meeting-house built on 
the site was moved west in the street to the north of 
the house in which Dr. Olds now lives to make room 
for the building of the larger church and was used 
as a town-hall and sometimes for school purposes. 
123 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



The peddlers on commencement day in case of a 
sudden shower would resort to it for shelter. It 
burned down many years ago. 

Near where Dr. Old's house stands there used to 
be a little one-story house, built I think by a man 
named Clark, a shoemaker. After his death it was 
purchased by Dr. Sabin, who sold it to Hitty 
"Whelden, who made a two-story house of it. After 
her death it passed into other hands and was finally 
purchased by Henry Sabin, who moved the old house 
and it is now doing duty as a dwelling on Belden 
Avenue. The next house down Glen Avenue was 
built by Harriet Mills, who conceived an ardent 
affection for one of Professor Cox's student boarders. 
Unfortunately for her, he did not reciprocate, and 
she became insane and for many years after his 
graduation she used to stand in the door-yard in 
front of her house watching and waiting for him to 
come for her. She was finally taken to an insane 
asylum. Henry Sabin purchased the place and 
adding it to his other property located a barn there. 

Thomas Cox, " Professor of Dust and Ashes" in 
the college, built the house where Rev. Mr. Slade 
now lives, and lived and died there. The house is 
now owned by the Misses Snyder, who erected a 
building for their school in the yard a few years ago. 
Cox sold a part of his land to Webster Noyes, who 
erected a building thereon for a shoe shop. The 
124 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



west part of his lot Cox sold to his son Albert, who 
built a house there which was burned down some 
years ago, and L. E. Noyes has built a fine house on 
the site. These were all the old houses on Glen 
Avenue, but now there is quite a hamlet there. 

On Fifth Avenue just below the dam stood Stephen 
Hosford's starch factory. In my younger days I 
drove the oxen to take many loads of potatoes to 
this factory. The price was then twelve cents per 
bushel. Chester Bailey and David Walley after- 
wards fitted this building with machinery for the 
manufacture of twine, and the dwellings in that 
locality were built at that time. The business not 
proving a success, the mill was changed into a saw 
mill, and standing for some years in a dilapidated 
condition, it finally took fire and burned down. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE OLD PLACES ON SOUTH STREET — THE HOSFORD 
HOUSE — DRINKING FLIP AND TELLING YARNS — 
THE CUMMINGS AND PETERS PLACES — THE REV- 
EREND WELLS GRIDLEY — "POTATO HILL*' — 
MARTIN I. TOWNSEND'S LONG WALK AND WHAT 
CAME OF IT — MRS. WILLIAM H. SEWARD — STONE 
HILL. 

The first dwelling after leaving Main Street, on 
the east side of South Street, was the house in which 
Stephen Hosford lived and died, also his widow 
after him, who was a sister of Russell Brown of 
Cheshire. They brought up quite a large family of 
interesting children. The eldest son, Henry, gradu- 
ated from the college with the highest honors in the 
class of 1843. James, the youngest son, read law in 
the office of Gov. Seward at Auburn, N. Y. , and 
settled in Geneseo, 111. The youngest daughter, a 
very fine looking girl and a great belle in her 
younger days, married Dr. A. M. Smith. The 
eldest daughter married C. R. Taft, for many years 
postmaster of the village, and they occupied the old 
house after the death of Mr. and Mrs. Hosford. 
This house is supposed to have been built by Lemuel 
Steward who owned much of the real estate in the 
western part of the town and lived and died there. 
126 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Dr. Samuel Porter was his executor. When Hos- 
ford came into possession of the place he opened a 
public house there, to which the farmers from the 
hills and the townspeople in the village used to 
resort evenings to pass the news of the day, swop 
stories, brag on what they had done and what they 
could do, and drink flip. When the flip began to 
take effect, it was marvelous to learn the number of 
acres of oats they could cradle in a day. 

A few feet north of his dwelling Hosford built a 
brick building the lower part of which he used for 
his store and the upper part rented for a hall. After 
Hosford gave up his store the Centre school district 
purchased the building and used it for a school-room 
until the Union school-house was built on Spring 
Street. The old site was sold to James Bridges and 
on it he erected the stables now owned by Tom 
McMahon. After the death of C. R. Taft the 
dwelling house and lot passed into the hands of 
A. D. Bullock who took down the house, and thus 
disappeared one of the old landmarks of the town. 
The next two houses south now occupied by Mrs. 
Hart and Mrs. Kellogg have already been referred 
to in former chapters. On the west side of the 
street stands a house built by Charles Benjamin, at 
one time in the mercantile business here with his 
cousin Seymour Whitman. He married Caroline, 
daughter of J. Robbins Bulkley, a very beautiful 
127 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and interesting girl. He moved from here to Pitts- 
field where he was in trade many years in partner- 
ship with his brother-in-law Charles Bulkley. He 
returned here in the sixties and purchased the farm 
owned by the Conkling estate, where he lived the 
remainder of his days. At the time he moved to 
Pittsfield his house was purchased by D. N. Dewey 
and others as a parsonage for the minister of the 
Congregational Church, and it was occupied by the 
Rev. N. Savage, and afterwards by the Rev. Dr. 
Peters, until Dr. Peters purchased part of house lot 
No. i, lying between the Charles Benjamin lot and 
the Gridley place now owned by Mr. Frederick 
Leake. This Charles Benjamin house was pur- 
chased in the fifties by Dr. William Cumming, who 
came here from Georgia and occupied the place until 
i860. Leaving in the fall of that year to spend the 
winter in his native state he was caught there by 
the outbreak of the Civil War and was pressed into 
the service of the Confederate army. In 1865, after 
the close of the war, Dr. Cumming returned and sold 
the place to the late Joseph White, and settled in 
Toronto, Canada. He afterwards returned to Georgia 
and died there quite recently. The house is now 
owned by Melville Egleston, a lawyer of New York 
city, who has entirely remodeled it. Dr. Peters 
built a house on the lot which he purchased of Mrs. 
Benjamin. This house was afterwards purchased 
128 



Boyhood Reminiscenxes. 



and for a number of years occupied by my sister 
Mrs. Geer as her summer residence. She sold it 
to the Rev. A. B. Jennings now of Sing Sing, 
N. Y., who in turn sold it to John B. Gale a wealthy 
retired lawyer from Troy. Mr. Gale moved the old 
house back, and built a handsome addition in front. 
In 1816 the Rev. Wells Gridley was settled over 
the Congregational Church of this village. Mrs. 
Benjamin, who looked after ministers in their 
anxieties for a settled home, sold him a building lot 
off from the back part of her house lot No. 1, upon 
which he erected a very fine house for those days. 
He was a good pastor and a very social man and he 
built up the church. Even Solomon the old hunter 
whom I spoke of in a former chapter, though he 
did not attend church, said he liked Mr. Gridley 
" as he had ears like his old hound." In 1833 an 
evangelist by the name of Foote came here and held 
a series of revival meetings. Many were converted, 
and a large number were added to the church 
through his preaching. Some of the old deacons, 
however, objected to his manner of conducting 
meetings and made trouble in the church. Dr. 
Griffin, at that time president of the college, also 
took exception to Foote's methods, which added to 
the discord in the church, and the outcome of it all 
was that Mr. Gridley resigned and went west and 
settled in the state of Illinois. But Gridley's name 
129 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



was for many years a household word with the old 
ladies of the church and he was indeed " Though 
lost to sight to memory dear." 

The Gridley house and lot was purchased by 
Emory Chamberlin, who moved down from his farm 
on Northwest Hill and occupied the place for many 
years. He sold to Mr. Swan, who opened a boys' 
boarding school there. Swan sold to S. Morley 
who came here to educate his sons. After they 
graduated he sold the place to Frederick Leake. 
Mr. Leake under-drained the land, moved the old 
Gridley house back and built on a handsome front, 
leaving the inside of the old house practically intact. 
The soil was clayey and after being thoroughly 
drained Leake was under the impression he could 
raise good crops and so he planted some early 
potatoes. The potatoes, however, turned out to be 
of the kind the Hutchinson family used to sing 
about : " Potatoes they grow small over there, and 
they eat them tops and all over there." Mrs. Leake, 
who is very original, fond of a joke, and readily sees 
the ridiculous side of persons and things, named 
their place " Potato Hill," and it is said that some 
of her calling-cards were engraved with that name. 

On the opposite side of the street stood old Noah's 
house, and it was a veritable ark. When Noah and 
his family left, the old ark soon disappeared, and on 
or near the spot where the ark rested a fine new 

130 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



house has been erected by Col. Archibald Hopkins 
of Washington, D. C. 

The next house beyond Mr. Leake's, in the old 
days, was a one-story house of modest pretensions 
which in my boyhood was owned and occupied by 
Orrin Kellogg. In his college days Martin I. 
Townsend of Troy, used to come from his hill-side 
home south of Green River across Stone Hill down 
South Street to the college, and twice a day he 
passed this house where lived the young lady he 
afterwards made his wife, and I presume he caught 
a glimpse of her as he passed and re-passed and 
sometimes perhaps they had a little chat over the 
gate. This house afterwards became the home of 
Mrs. Gershom Bulkley where she and her daughter, 
Mrs. Brewster, lived and died. After passing 
through the hands of several owners it was finally 
purchased by Mrs. Ward who has remodeled the 
house and made a fine residence of it. 

The next house, now occupied by Mrs. Smedley 
and her son William, was built by Gurdon Bulkley 
who owned the Stone Hill farm now in the possession 
of H. T. Procter. Bulkley left his farm after he 
married his second wife, who was a daughter of 
Dr. Porter, and occupied this house the remainder 
of his life. His son Henry occupied the farm many 
years and had a boys' private school there. Mrs. 
Bulkley was afflicted with some ailment which used 

131 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



to puzzle us children very much. When the old 
ladies of the village used to visit our mother, some 
one of them would generally report that Mrs. So 
and So was sick, and the question being asked 
"What is the matter with her?" the answer would 
always be " Oh ! the same that ails Mrs. Gurdon 
Bulkley," and what that was we children could never 
find out. They had one son who graduated from 
the college in the class of 1843, became a lawyer in 
New York city, went to California, and died there 
a few years later. 

Next to the ark, on the east side of the street, 
stood the old Cephas Bardwell house where he lived 
and died and his son Cephas after him. In the way- 
back years of the past, Saturday evening prayer- 
meetings were held in this house, but in later years 
the house was remodeled and "evil spirits were 
retailed there." 

South of this house stands an old one-story dwell- 
ing on the Meacham farm which has been occupied 
by various families but is now the home of "The 
Hermit of Flora's Glen." A few rods further south 
can be seen all that is left of an old cellar hole where 
stood in the olden times a house occupied by a 
family by the name of Foot, and " thereby hangs a 
tale." The mother was a fine looking, energetic 
woman, but the father was a ne'er-do-well. They 
had one daughter, a very pretty girl, in whom the 
132 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



mother's ambitions were centered. One year the 
mother and daughter visited some friends in the 
central part of New York state. There the daughter 
met a young lawyer by the name of Miller who fell 
in love with her and they became engaged. A few 
months after their return to Williamstown, Miller 
came on to visit his fiancee. On reaching the 
village he enquired for " Esquire Foot," but no one 
knew any such person. He finally succeeded, how- 
ever, in finding the little old house, and, nothing 
daunted, took the young girl away with him as his 
bride. William H. Seward, one of New York's 
most honored sons, read law in Miller's office, and 
becoming interested in his daughter finally married 
her. In after years when Seward was governor of the 
state of New York, Mrs. Seward and the governor 
came out here from Albany and visited the old West 
Cemetery in search of her grandmother's grave. The 
spot was pointed out to them by old Mr. Walden 
who had the care of the cemetery all his life, and 
Mrs. Seward had a suitable headstone erected over 
the grave, and there it still stands a monument to 
this noble woman whom the honors of her husband 
did not cause to forget that her mother came from 
a humble abode in the little village of Williamstown. 
We will now pass over Stone Hill, which in olden 
times was the only route from the state of Vermont 
to the south part of the county. The brick house 

133 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



located on the very brow of the hill, for many years 
owned and occupied by the Bulkley family, was 
once owned and occupied by David Johnson. The 
brick house south of this was built by Joshua Morey 
who occupied it until his death. There was formerly 
a road, since discontinued, running straight from 
the Stone Hill road and coming out on the main 
road near the place of the late Cooley Phelps. Old 
Mr. Woodcock lived in a house situated on this 
road at a place called Woodcock Corners. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A FEW PAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE STARK- 
WEATHER FAMILY — MRS. HOMER BARTLETT AND 
MRS. JOHN T. HOFFMAN — THE OLD WOLCOTT 
PLACE — MOODY'S BRIDGE — THE LINE HOUSE — 
THE FAMOUS SAND SPRINGS. 

At the corner of North and Main Streets stood 
the Starkweather store spoken of in a former chapter. 
The first dwelling north was the William Stark- 
weather house, a large two-story building facing 
the street. From this house went forth a very- 
interesting family of children. Most of the girls 
were very bright and beautiful. The eldest married 
Homer Bartlett, a graduate of the college in the 
class of 1818. After being admitted to the bar he 
opened a law office here and afterwards practised 
law in Ware, Mass. From there he moved to 
Lowell to take the position of counsel and treasurer 
of the Massachusetts Cotton Manufacturing Cor- 
poration. He lived in Lowell many years but after- 
wards moved to Boston. He had one daughter, 
Mrs. Richardson, who died some years ago. After 
the death of his first wife he married a very lovely 
woman who used to accompany him to commence- 
ment when he came to attend the meetings of the 
board of trustees. Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett gave the 
college two scholarships of $2,500 each. 

135 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Another of the Starkweather girls married Rev. 
Parsons Cooke of the class of i322, and another 
married Johnathan E. Woodbridge of the same 
class. Jane, the pride and beauty of the family, 
married a man by the name of Pratt, who was a 
student in college but did not graduate — a specu- 
lative, visionary man, who was sometimes rich and 
sometimes poor. She never came back to Williams- 
town after her marriage. She died some years ago, 
leaving two or three children. 

Another sister, Ann, remained single, and after 
her mother's death left Williamstown and never 
came back. The eldest son, William Starkweather, 
Jr., graduated in the class of 1S09, read law and 
opened an office in Williamstown, and had a large 
practice. Judge D. X. Dewey, once told the writer 
that Starkweather used to leave for Lenox a few 
days before the sitting of the court with one hundred 
and fifty writs to enter. Those were the days of 
little money and much litigation. Henry Stark- 
weather, another son, graduated in the class of 1825. 
He settled in the mercantile business in New York 
city where he married and had one daughter, who 
became the wife of John T. Hoffman, afterwards 
mayor of New York city, and governor of the state. 
Through the mayor's influence Starkweather obtained 
fat positions under the city government and became 
wealthy, and after his father and mother's death he 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



bought the old homestead. Augustus Starkweather 
went into business in Pownal, Vt., made some 
money, and after living a bachelor many years 
married a Miss Davis of Waterford, N. Y., a very 
charming woman. He brought his bride here to 
live, and tearing down the old house he erected the 
building lately purchased by the Kappa Alpha 
society for an annex. In this new house Mrs. 
Starkweather entertained much and with dignity and 
grace. Mr. Starkweather was a justice of the peace, 
and the writer tried many cases before him in his 
early practice, before the police court was estab- 
lished. Henry Starkweather sold the old home- 
stead to the Rev. Addison Ballard when he was 
minister here, and Augustus lived the remainder of 
his days in the old Benjamin house. He died in 
1868, leaving a widow and two sons, Richard, a 
successful merchant of Troy, and Homer who lives 
in Brooklyn. 

The next house north was the old Mosher place 
where Mosher the butcher lived. He had two 
children, Oscar and Versey. After his father's 
death. Oscar carried on the meat market, and looked 
after his mother and sister. The sister was harm- 
lessly insane. I remember the mother much bent 
with age pacing up and down the street, followed by 
her wild-eyed daughter with some little blossoms in 
her hand which she had plucked by the way. The 

137 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



house was afterwards bought and remodeled by 
H. B. Curtis and is now owned and occupied by 
Frank K. McLaughlin. A Mrs. Bulkley, the mother 
of Henry Bulkley, came here and built a house on 
the opposite side of the street near where Charles 
G. Sanford's house now stands. The house after- 
wards burned down and she depa^ed with her 
daughters. The house across the street was altered 
over by Charles G. Sanford from an old carpenter 
shop built by H. B. Curtis. "Bill" Pratt the 
orator lived and died in a little old house, now taken 
down, north of the Mosher house. Near this spot 
a road ran over the hill where E. M. Jerome's house 
now stands, and a short distance north of this house 
stood a dwelling owned and occupied many years 
ago by Solomon Wolcott, whose daughter married 
Daniel Noble, lawyer and treasurer of the college 
at the time of his death in 1830. His grandson and 
Wolcott's great-grandson, the Rev. Charles A. Stod- 
dard, of the New York Observer, has built a beauti- 
ful summer home on the old Wolcott place a short 
distance west of the site of the old house. Col. 
Samuel Tyler purchased this place of Wolcott, and 
lived and died there, leaving the house to his son 
Isham. After Isham's death the place was sold to 
Mr. Bixby who moved here from his farm on North- 
west Hill. The present Charityville road running 
north from the Northwest Hill road to meet the road 
138 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



over Tyler Hill was opened in 1834, and the old 
road was closed. Bixby demolished the old Wolcott 
house and built the dwelling Marshall Prindle now 
owns and occupies. The house on this street nearly 
opposite the Bixby house, was built and occupied by 
John Knowlton. A small one-story house stood on 
the opposite side of the street occupied by Mrs. 
McCumber French. At her death the house was 
taken down. Thomas Cox, " Prof essor of Dust and 
Ashes," once lived in the Root place which is now 
occupied by Samuel Starkweather. Just north stands 
a house built by Asa Talmage when the road was 
first opened. Further north on the east side of the 
street stands the Whitman farm house now owned 
by William Leet. This street is now lined by a 
number of houses on either side. South of the 
Hoosac River on this street stands the Asa Northam 
house which has passed through the hands of many 
different owners, and is now occupied by Barney 
Andrews. Just north of the river on the east side 
of the street where the railroad tracks are now laid, 
stood a house owned by Moses Seeley, which was 
afterwards occupied by the late Willard Moody, and 
the bridge built over the river at this point is called 
Moody's Bridge to this day. This house was moved 
by Justin Ford, north to the corner where his widow 
now lives. The house on the west side of the 
street where Sheriff Prindle lives was built by 

139 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Col. Simonds, and was afterwards occupied by Asa 
Northam, Jr. Alfred Jordan owned this farm and 
sold it to Leonard Cole, who lived there many years. 
After his death it came into the hands of his son 
John, who sold it and went west. The late Edwin 
Bridges married Leonard's eldest daughter and their 
two sons and daughter live there. The younger son, 
Charles, owns the farm of his great-grandfather 
Jonathan Bridges, which has never been out of the 
family. A few years ago he sold a part of the farm 
to the Fitchburg Railroad Company, to enable them 
to enlarge their railroad yards. The house opposite 
the Cole house was built by Henry Seeley. North 
of this stands a one-story house known as the Tusine 
house, from the old man by that name who lived 
there, and which must be older than any other house 
in that vicinity. Across the street on the corner 
stood the Ephraim Seeley house, owned by a man 
who held much land in the township and was called 
a land grabber. In my young days this house and 
farm was owned by old Mr. Thomas, and after his 
death by his son Dwight who had a vegetable garden 
here for many years. This house burned down a 
long time ago, and Justin Ford purchased the farm 
and moved the Moody house on to the site. On the 
opposite side of the street stands the old stone school - 
house now used as a blacksmith shop. North of 
this P. R. Cole built a house and store, and after 
140 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



getting rich from his trade altered the store building 
into a dwelling house. John Fisk, brother of Jim 
Fisk, the peddler, built his house north and had his 
blacksmith shop on the opposite side of ihe street. 
Edward Fling, from Limerick, ran the blacksmith 
shop after Fisk and built the house on that side of 
the street. North of this, Willard Moody built his 
house and still occupies it, being the only old resi- 
dent of that side of the river, except P. R. Cole. 
On the opposite side of the street stands the Silas 
Stone house where he lived for many years and in 
which he died. He was the son of Artemas Stone 
who kept the old stone tavern north of this house 
which was a famous old hostelry in those days where 
man and beast were well entertained and cared for. 
To the north across Broad Brook stands the Chester 
Stone house owned by a brother of Silas, who after 
living there many years sold it and went to Benning- 
ton, Vt. After living there a few years he returned 
and purchased the John Fisk place where he passed 
the remainder of his days. The next house was a 
long one-story dwelling of the old style built on the 
hill west of the street and but a few rods east of 
where the railroad track now runs. This was owned 
and occupied by Oliver Barrett, and after his death 
by his only son Proctor who married Hannah Curtis, 
a cousin of H. B. Curtis, who came here from 
Lanesboro and taught the Buxton school. She was 
141 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



a girl of much beauty. After their marriage Barrett 
sold this place to Lyman Bennett and bought a farm 
in Bennington, Vt. The old house has disappeared. 
The next house is the Line House, which in my early 
recollections was kept as a tavern by Esquire Ware. 
He was a Vermont justice, and, in the north room 
which is on the Vermont side used to join in marriage 
couples coming from Massachusetts. He did quite 
a flourishing business in this line, as the laws of 
Massachusetts in those early days required the mar- 
riage intentions to be published for two weeks before 
the marriage, which rather hampered those who 
wished to be married there and then. 

Nearby is the famous Sand Spring which for time 
immemorial has bubbled bright and sparkling out 
of the sandy soil. At the time of my boyhood visits 
to this now famous spot there was only a small hole 
in the ground where the water came up and ran 
down in a couple of tubes in which we used to dip. 
At that time old Mr. Sweet owned the spring. 
Afterwards Col. William Waterman bought the place 
and lived there. After his death the property passed 
to his son Henry who lived there for a time. Finally, 
after passing through various hands, the property 
was purchased by Doctor Bailey of Pittsfield who 
had the spring curbed-up with stone and built a 
large sanitarium there. The baths afterwards came 
into the hands of Mr. Swift, the popular landlord of 
142 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the Wilson House at North Adams, who enlarged the 
house built by Bailey, erected other buildings, re- 
modeled the bath house, purchased the pine grove in 
front, and was making the place a first-class summer 
resort, when unfortunately the house took fire and 
burned down. The property is now owned by 
Doctor Lloyd, who has built a new sanitarium and 
is utilizing the water for making ginger ale, which 
is said to be of excellent quality. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

WATER STREET — SMALL BEER THE ONLY BEVER- 
AGE — SOME OLD-TIME ADVENTISTS — A LEAF FROM 
THE HISTORY OF MRS. BRADLEY MARTIN — THE 
HUBBELL PLACE — KRIGGER MILL— HOPPER ROAD 
— STEVE BACON'S STORIES — THE TOWNSEND 
FAMILY. 

Passing from Main Street down Water Street, a 
two-story narrow house formerly stood where Cole's 
brick block now stands. Adjoining that to the south, 
where the Cole house now stands, was an old brick 
house on the brow of the hill overlooking Green 
River. This house, which became very dilapidated, 
finally burned down, and Liberty Bartlett built the 
fine house which stands on the site and lived there 
with his family. He tore down the little tenement 
house above referred to, and built the brick block 
north of his residence now known as Cole's block. 
Bartlett was engaged in the tannery and shoe 
business, and his tannery was located on the west 
bank of Green River, about where Town's mill is 
now located. The old Nathaniel Town mill stood 
just south of the bridge which crosses the river to 
Snob Hill, and the Bartlett shoe shops were in a 
long house close to and south of this mill, with the 
144 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



tan vats below. Bartlett, with his business enter- 
prise and band of shoemakers, was in his time a 
great factor in the town, and gave many men em- 
ployment. When he opened his store he persuaded 
Solomon Bulkley and C. R. Taft to become inter- 
ested in the business, and it proved a losing venture 
for them. Bartlett failed and left the town. His 
wife and children lived here for some years after he 
left, and then went to join him at Little Rock, 
Arkansas. Some two years since the writer received 
a brief, written by Bartlett in some law suit of his, 
and on a slip attached were the words : " Respects 
of Liberty Bartlett, age 86 years and 3 months." 
lie has since died, but two of his children are still 
living : Eliza, the eldest daughter, in Washington, 
D. C, and Mary, the youngest, who is married and 
lives in Oklahoma Territory. Two years ago the 
writer partook of a Christmas dinner at his sister's 
in Washington, at which Eliza was present. Time 
has dealt gently with her, and she looks much as she 
did when in Williamstown. Luther Bartlett, father 
of Liberty, built the house on the bank of and par- 
tially overhanging the river north of the bridge 
leading to Snob Hill, and lived there up to the time 
of his death. He had a family of sons and daughters, 
all of whom are now dead. Mrs. James Meacham 
was one of the daughters. None of his descendants 
now live in the town. Among his grandsons are 

145 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Harvey Wellington, cashier of the Adams National 
Bank, and Hiram Bartlett, ex-sheriff of the county, 
also the sons of James Meacham of Bennington, Vt. 

Nat Town lived in the long house on the west 
side of the street at the time he ran the old mill. 
His wife was a sister of Dennis Smith and Mrs. 
Shattuck. They had a large family, of whom but 
one is living, Milo, who now resides at Shelburne 
Falls, Mass. Charles, the eldest son, ran the old 
mill after his father's death until he built the present 
mill, which stands on the site of the old mill and the 
old Bartlett shoe shops. He left two sons, who are 
millers. After Liberty Bartlett left town, Harvey 
T. Cole purchased the Bartlett property and occupied 
the store till it burned down in 1S58, when he 
erected the present brick block. 

Pierce O'Connell built the house south of the 
blacksmith shop. The writer tried a case in which 
Pierce was defendant on a charge of selling ardent 
spirits. One of the witnesses was asked what kind 
of liquor he purchased. His answer was : " I hardly 
know ; it was some pulverized stuff." 

Further south, on the west side of the street, 
stands the house of Nichols, the old-time surveyor 
and watch repairer, where the students used to resort 
to get their clothes laundried and also to quench their 
thirst with small beer, which was of good quality and 
cost six cents per bottle. This was the strongest 
146 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



drink the boys could partake of in those early days. 
This house was once the home of Doctor Towner, 
an old-time physician and a man of much influence 
and note»in the town, who represented it many terms 
in the Legislature. He was the great-grandfather 
of Clarence M. Smith. South of this house was a 
large rambling dwelling occupied by Stephen Smith, 
whose wife was a sister of David Torrey who lived 
on the cross road to Oblong, where his son, William 
Torrey, also lived and died. The house is now 
occupied by L. H. Gardner. Stephen was the father 
of Josiah and Lucius Smith, both graduates of the 
college. The old house has disappeared, and others 
have been erected on the place. 

The old house which formerly stood at the junction 
of New and Water Streets, was built by Cook the 
tinman, and Peter Coon. They were strong Ad- 
ventists, and Peter had great faith that the meek 
would inherit the earth. He would sometimes come 
on Sunday afternoon to the old white meeting-house 
on the hill to hear Dr. Hopkins preach, and being a 
little hard of hearing, would sit up near the pulpit. 
When Dr. Hopkins' argument became too hot for 
him, you would see Peter's white head go bobbing 
down the aisle, and the next day he would call on 
the doctor to have the argument out with him. 
When Peter got to be old and feeble and could just 
creep around, he was asked what he thought now 

M7 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



about his doctrine. " I don't know," he replied, 
" but the devil will get the best of me after all ; but 
I don't mean to have him." But Peter's time came 
at last, the same as to others who he had thought 
had died because they were sinners and could not 
live to inherit. 

Dennis Smith's house still stands near where his 
shop used to be, and is now owned by Mrs. W. C. 
Goodrich. Next south stand two houses, one occu- 
pied by Crosier, and another by Steve Pratt, the old- 
time stage driver. Beyond this once stood an old 
yellow house, which many years ago was occupied by 
Isaac Sherman, a nephew of Bissel Sherman, being 
a son of an elder brother who came from Rhode 
Island and settled in Pownal, Vt., or in North 
Petersburg, N. Y., I forget which. Isaac, when a 
young man, lived in Adams, and there are those 
living there now who knew him well. He went to 
New York city, and from there to Buffalo, where he 
engaged in the lumber business, and being a shrewd 
business man, accumulated money and became very 
wealthy. Isaac had only one daughter, who at his 
death inherited his entire estate. When a young 
lady, this daughter was sent to a fashionable boarding 
school in New York city, where she became acquainted 
with the daughters of the Vanderbilts and other 
wealthy families. At the wedding of Margaret 
Louisa Vanderbilt to the late Elliot F. Shepard, 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



where Miss Sherman was one of the bridesmaids, 
she met Bradley Martin of New York, and afterwards 
married him. Their daughter last year married Lord 
Craven of England, and the wedding was one of the 
fashionable events of the season. 

Nearly opposite the Sherman house lived Selden 
Cone, I think in the house which Timothy White 
now occupies, and his shop was on the east side of 
the street. Daniel Evans lived in a one-story house 
which the son, E. E. Evans, now occupies. The 
next old-time house is the James Meacham dwelling, 
where two or three generations have lived. It is now 
owned by the heirs of James and Edward Meacham. 
The family is extinct in Williamstown. Many 
buildings have been erected on this street since those 
old days. 

Passing south, on the east side of the street we 
come to a house occupied by Mrs. Calvin Brown, 
once the home of Henry Hulbert who was a shoe- 
maker and had a tannery there. On the west side 
of the street is the old Day place, much improved 
and now owned by John B. Gale. The next farm 
was the Jacob Bacon place. The house burned 
down about two years ago. This farm also is now 
owned by John B. Gale. The Bacons who live on 
the road to the Hopper are the descendants of this 
Bacon, and three generations of the Bacon family in 
succession have lived in this house. One of Jacob 
149 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Bacon's daughters married Almon Harrison and 
another daughter married Orrin Kellogg. Kellogg 
and his wife inherited the farm and sold it to Isaac 
Latham and purchased a house and lot on South 
Street, which Mrs. Ward now owns and occupies. 
Kellogg had two daughters and one son, the latter a 
graduate of the class of 1847. He became a lawyer 
and bank cashier in Troy, where he died some years 
ago. His widow owns a house on South Street 
which she occupies summers with her only daughter. 
The Titus Harrison place now owned by Almon 
Stevens, the market gardener, was the house occu- 
pied by the Rev. Mr. Swift when he was settled 
here. He planted the pine tree in front of the 
house which is now more than one hundred years 
old. The house still retains its original shape as a 
gambrel-roofed structure. The house stands on 
the house lot originally set aside for the minister's 
house. It was in the woods on this old place that 
Swift was chopping when Solomon, the old hunter, 
asked him for the ax to cut the fox out of the hollow 
tree. Daniel Stevens who married a daughter of 
Dr. Samuel Porter purchased this place of John 
Harrison who moved west. After the death of his 
first wife he married a daughter of Stephen Bacon, 
and when she died he left this house and built the 
house to the north where he lived with his daughter 
Mary up to the time of his death. 

150 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



After you pass through the woods, on the west 
side of the street stood Joseph Thurber's house. 
He had a family of three children, one son and two 
daughters. The oldest daughter married Thomas 
Hall, son of Willard Hall, who built a house on the 
opposite side of the street on his father's land. 
After Thurber's death his house was taken down and 
the plot is now connected with the Williams farm. 

On the Stratton Road which runs from the river 
road easterly stands the house of William Blair, 
whose wife was Sally Train, the daughter of Rachel 
Simons Train. This house was remodeled by Dr. 
Charles H. Hubbell who purchased the farm. The 
place is now owned by his son Charles B. Hubbell 
of the class of 1874, a prominent lawyer of New 
York city and one of the city school commissioners. 
Mr. Hubbell spends the summer months with his 
family on the farm. Further east on the hill is the 
farm of Charles Ingalls. A brick house once owned 
by Isaac Latham used to stand on this site. The 
old house was taken down a few years ago by Mr. 
Wing and a new house built on the old site. Further 
south was a house and farm occupied by J. S. 
Fowler which was purchased by his father of Lucien 
Morey. Morey purchased the place of the Whit- 
man estate. It is called in Dr. Perry's book the 
Loveland place. Loveland lived on the farm when 
the Whitmans owned it but it never belonged to him. 

151 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Proceeding south on the River Road we come to 
the Elisha Williams house which in the old times 
was a one-story house, but was afterwards enlarged 
by Charles Williams. After Charles' death the farm 
was purchased by H. T. Procter who has improved 
the house and erected some fine stock barns. Next 
south of this is the brick house built by Almon Har- 
rison which he occupied many years and his son 
Clement after him. Clement Harrison sold to Ben- 
jamin Briggs, the money lender, and purchased the 
fine farm between Williamstown and North Adams 
on which he lived the remainder of his life. There 
is a fine spring on the old place which Harrison 
utilized for the making of cider brandy. This place 
is now owned by Lucien Jenks. A few years ago 
the interior of the house was burned out but the 
brick walls were left standing and a new house was 
built in the old shell. On the opposite side of the 
street stand two small houses, one built by Edward 
Walden, the other the residence of the family of the 
late Edwin Town. Further on is the Davis house 
owned by his daughter. Nearly opposite is the 
stone Baptist Church. Further south is the Thomas 
Bingham place. Next is the Julius A. Daniels 
house which is now owned by his nephew. Next is 
the Willard Hall place now owned and occupied by 
his son Francis. 

We now come to the Krigger Mill situated at the 
152 



Boyhood Reminiscenxes. 



junction of the two streams where the toll grists 
were ground for many years for the dwellers of the 
south part of the town. The house on the corner 
in which Krigger dwelt, which stood there many 
years, is now being moved near the house to the 
west which was built by Mrs. Stephen Bacon. These 
dwellings are now owned by the town of Williams- 
town and are used as the town farm for the poor. 

Passing to the east up the Hopper Road, which 
used to be called Shack Street in my younger days, 
we come to the George W. Daniels house on the 
west side of the street. Further on is the David 
Chamberlain place now occupied by Mrs. Ruth J. 
Ward. Further up the road on a little plateau west 
of the brook stood a small school-house in which 
the writer when in college taught school during the 
winter months and boarded around. 

The teacher boarded six weeks at Stephen Bacon's 
as nearly half of the scholars came from that house. 
Stephen senior was then alive but very feeble. He 
was very fond in his old age of telling big stories 
and the teacher did his best to hold his end up. 
One day Bacon informed the teacher that when in 
his prime he had cradled ten acres of oats in one 
day. To match this the teacher said that the most 
he ever cradled in one day was six acres of hemlock 
timber. Then the old man told how many hundred 
pounds he had carried on his back, to which the 

153 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



schoolmaster's repartee was that he once saw a man 
in Troy carry twenty bushels of salt on his shoulder 
and that his feet sunk into the pavements up to his 
ankles. The old man looked at him a moment and 
said " You lie, you lie like a dog." 

On the cross road which comes out south on the 
New Ashford road is an old one-story house known 
as the Potter place. Here William Potter from Rhode 
Island lived and died. He had three daughters, 
one of whom married Asa Daniels and another Elder 
Sweet for his second or third wife. After their 
father's death they sold the farm and two of the girls 
purchased a small house beyond the Francis Deming 
place on the New Ashford road. 

Returning to Krigger's Corners and turning south, 
beyond the town farm house is the Albert Green 
house now owned by George Daniels. Passing 
several small places we come to where on the west 
of the street once stood the old Judd house, which 
was one of the old-fashioned gambrel-roofed houses. 
It was destroyed by fire some ten years ago. Judd 
had a clothing mill on the river south of the road. 
He had quite a family of pretty daughters. After 
his death his son Edward sold the place to Elisha 
Brooks, and after his death it was owned by Julius 
Daniels. 

A short distance west there used to be a bridge 
which crossed the river and a road leading south on the 

154 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 

hill to the Townsend place, a large white house with 
tall poplar trees in front. This was once the Eddy 
farm, but his daughter wishing to live in the village, 
he sold the farm to Nathaniel Townsend and pur- 
chased the old tavern stand in the lower part of the 
village afterwards known as the Union House. Two 
of Eddy's sons studied for the ministry ; one gradu- 
ated at Williams College. One of his daughters 
became the wife of the late Levi Smedley. Another 
of his daughters married a minister by the name of 
Coe, a graduate of the college. Another son lived 
with the Smedleys the latter part of his life. He 
married a sister of Stephen and John Hickox, a very 
beautiful girl who had many admirers. The old 
Eddy farm after being purchased by the Townsends 
was the home of Rufus, Martin I., and Randolph 
Townsend, when they attended Williams College. 
In order to attend the college exercises they used to 
make daily on foot a long journey from the farm to the 
village. This was about the only kind of gymnastic 
exercises we had in those days, and I doubt if any 
stronger or more athletic men are now turned out 
by the college with its costly gymnasium and fine 
athletic equipment. The two younger brothers are 
still living, Martin I., a prominent lawyer of Troy, 
who represented that district for two terms in Con- 
gress and also served as United States District 
Attorney for the northern district of New York state. 

155 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



He is now eighty-six years old and still hale and 
hearty and actively engaged in the practice of his 
profession. Four years ago in his eighty-third year 
he made a trip to Europe with his grandson and 
travelled all over the continent. The youngest 
brother, Randolph, is also a lawyer and lives in New 
York city. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WHITE OAKS — SOME OF ITS NOTED CHARACTERS 
— AN ORIGINAL HYMN — THE BUXTON PRAYER- 
MEETINGS — WATCHING WITH THE SICK — BILL 
SHATTUCK, FUNERAL DIRECTOR— THE LATE WIL- 
LIAM PRATT — A TEMPERANCE SERMON. 

In the north-east corner of the town on the Ver- 
mont state line, there is a little hamlet known as the 
White Oaks, in olden times mostly occupied by a 
colored population, most of whom came from New 
York state when slavery was abolished there. In 
this little hamlet dwelt many queer characters, who- 
can readily be recalled by the older inhabitants of the 
town. Ishmael Titus, an old negro, with a large 
wen on his neck, lived in a house near Broad Brook 
known as the Cato place. In a house north of this 
lived Harvey Titus, son of Ishmael. Near this 
George Washington Adams purchased a lot and built 
his residence, and south of him Abraham Parsons, 
better known as "Abe Bunter," brother-in-law of 
George Washington, built his imposing dwelling, 
leaving his former residence further down near the 
brook. The house on the brook was a fine one, but 
the rains descended and the floods came and the 
waters covered the earth, and Abe's dwelling not 
being founded upon a rock, and there being no ark 

157 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



in preparation, he fled with his family to the hills and 
built his dwelling on the high lands where the floods 
could not reach him. On the road which leads from 
the hollow road to Oak Hill, once stood a shanty 
known as the John Ballou place, where a poor white 
family was raised, which for many generations an- 
noyed the people of the village with their begging. 
In this little hut with the one room there lived John 
and Hannah Ballou. They had ten children, not 
one of whom could ever learn to read or write. The 
family eked out a miserable existence by making 
door mats of corn husks, and coarse baskets. One 
of the sons, Aaron, was so misshapen from rheuma- 
tism, that his head was drawn down under one arm 
and he had to swing himself along on crutches. 
Two of the other children were frozen to death one 
winter night in crossing Petersburg Mountain. This 
led Judge Bulkley to make the remark that Peters- 
burg Mountain was equal to a state almshouse for 
Williamstown, as it relieved the town of so many of 
its paupers. But one of the family is now alive, 
Steve Ballou, who is now an inmate of the town 
poorhouse. 

For many years there was not a more benighted 
region in any heathen land than this settlement, until 
about i860, when Professor Albert Hopkins began 
his great work of civilizing and christianizing this 
hamlet by holding weekly prayer-meetings there. In 
158 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



time he not only taught the people to be self-support- 
ing but also encouraged them to raise crops to sell 
and devote part of the proceeds to the cause of foreign 
missions. It may be remarked in passing that it 
seems strange that in the very place where the work 
of foreign missions was inaugurated the far more 
important work of domestic missions should have 
been so long neglected. The writer was present 
when the little chapel was dedicated, and the pro- 
fessor preached his first sermon. Having a prophetic 
imagination he pictured to his audience a man who 
had left his New England home and gone west to 
seek his fortune. The grasshoppers had eaten up 
his crops and the cyclone had laid low his dwelling, 
and after many years he turned his face again toward 
his old home. "Yes," said the professor, "they are 
coming back. These hills which surround us are 
going to be dotted with dwellings. They are coming 
back." And as I have seen dwellings spring up here 
and there on these hills, verily I believe that Professor 
Hopkins was indeed inspired and was a prophet in 
his day and generation. 

One of Professor Hopkins' converts in the White 
Oaks was a servant in Mrs. Seymour Whitman's 
family. One day Mrs. Whitman said to her "Caro- 
line, did I not hear you swear just now?" "No, 
ma'am, you didn't ; I used to swear, but when Pro- 
fessor Hopkins held meetings up in the White Oaks 

159 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



where I lived I felt so damned bad I riz for prayers 
and I haint swored a word since." I told this story 
to Professor Hopkins and he said : " Don't you ever 
tell that story again as long as you live." I replied, 
"Professor Hopkins, I will tell that story every 
chance I get. It's too good to keep." 

Some years ago when my youngest sister was living 
in Williamstown, she took an old alumnus of the col- 
lege, a very bright fellow, over to one of the meetings 
at Professor "Al's" little chapel in the White Oaks. 
As they drove home he said that the meeting 
reminded him of an old hymn which ran : 

"One kind act in life's long journey 
Lifts somewhat our load of sin ; 
As the musk in colored meeting 
Modifies the air within." 

In Professor Hopkins' will he left the White Oaks 
as a legacy to Williams College, expressing the hope 
that some willing hands and hearts would be found 
to carry on the good work which he had begun. This 
hope has been fulfilled, and the work there has been 
blessed, and the district is no longer a blot on the 
fair name of the beautiful village which gave birth 
to the American Board of Foreign Missions. 

In my childhood days one of the events of the 

week was the Sunday night prayer-meeting. This 

was generally held at the little Buxton school-house, 

but sometimes at the houses of Anthony Sanders or 

1 60 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Justin Ford (now the residence of Col. A. L. Hop- 
kins) These prayer-meetings were well attended by 
all the people in the neighborhood, some of whom 
were more remarkable for their piety and zeal than 
for their education. One of the residents of the 
district used to go a-fishing every Sunday morning 
and then come into the prayer-meeting in the evening 
and hold forth very eloquently — his favorite topic 
being " How Saint Paul led the children of Israel 
through the wilderness." This same man's wife had 
very little confidence in her husband's professions of 
religion and rarely attended the meetings. This 
being noticed, some one asked the reason and he re- 
plied : "Waal, you know, she's so dambitious and 
works so hard during the week, she's too tired." 
Another regular attendant was old Hod Reed, who 
used to pray regularly for "Our sins of home mis- 
sions and commissions." About two miles away 
lived a half-witted fellow, who had a very pious 
mother. She used to teach him a verse of Scriptures to 
say at the prayer-meeting. As the distance was quite 
long, before he reached the school-house his verse 
had usually partially escaped his memory. One night 
as usual he prefaced his remarks with " My Christian 
friends, what all we here for this night come?" 
and then repeated his verse as follows : ' ' Lord 
say heavy laden weary come to me yoke easy burden 
light Lord say come unto me rest unto your souls." 
161 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



One night old Sarah Blank exhorted "I long to 
leave this world of sin and be safe in Beelzebub's 
bosom." A pious brother plucked her sleeve and 
said, "Sister Sarah, you mean Abraham's bosom." 
"Abraham or Beelzebub," continued the good sister, 
"any of them old patriarchs, it don't make no kind 
of difference to me." At one time the clergyman 
left and a new one was expected. At the weekly 
meeting Brother S. arose and prayed "Oh! Lord, 
send us a minister not made with hands, eternal in 
the heavens ! " 

There was a common young fellow, an hostler 
from near Pownal, who got religion and came to one 
of the prayer-meetings. During the evening he 
arose and said : " I ask your prayers. I am troubled 
with wandering thoughts. Every time I try to say 
my prayers — wandering thoughts : every time I try to 
read my bible — wandering thoughts. Gals! Gals!! 
Gals!!!" 

The times of which I write were of course many 
years before the days of the trained nurse, and my 
sisters were frequently sent by our mother to watch 
with the sick and the dying, no matter how contagious 
or dreadful the disease. In the neighborhood lived 
old Mrs. D., who had been confined to her bed for 
many weeks with an incurable disease. My youngest 
sister and Frances Sanders were sent one night to 
watch with the dying woman. About two o'clock in 
162 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the morning an older woman who was also watching 
thought the end was near, so she sent the two young 
girls with a lantern, lighted by a tallow candle, to 
arouse the neighbors. In a short space of time they 
were all crowded around the bed in the little room, 
where they watched and waited. Finally a woman 
who had been very attentive to the sick woman, with 
a prospective eye to the coming widower, remarked : 
4 'Waal, folks, we might as well set down. Watched 
pot never biles." 

For many years the undertaker and funeral director 
of the village was "Bill " Shattuck. At the close of 
the funeral discourse it was Bill's custom to appear in 
the door-way and make this announcement : ' ' The 
relatives will now take leave of the corpse, beginning 
at the nearest and ending at the most remote, and so 
on, preserving that order through, and be as expe- 
ditious as possible and avoid all confusion." After 
all who desired had viewed the remains, Bill would 
appear again and say: "The teams are now before 
the door. The relations will pass out this door into 
the hall, beginning at the nearest and ending at the 
most remote, and so on, preserving that order through, 
and be as expeditious as possible, and avoid all 
confusion." 

One of the most remarkable funerals that ever took 
place in the town was probably that of old Mrs. Pratt, 
the mother of Ebenezer, Russell and William Pratt, 
163 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



at which the chief mourners were the three sons just 
named, accompanied by their six wives. The most 
celebrated of the three sons was " Bill," the college 
wood-sawer and orator, who died but a few years 
since, and is doubtless remembered by most of the 
present generation. One of Bill's speeches used to 
run somewhat as follows: "God, Man, Heart, South 
America, shall we stand here and be rejected in cold 
weather? Triangles, Shingles, Scissors, Silver Moon- 
beams, No ! We are responsible for our own con- 
ductions. Ottah ! " 

The first temperance sermon that was ever preached 
in the town was delivered by a minister from Pownal 
in the Congregational church. As Mrs. Skinner, a 
most worthy lady, was coming out of the church, 
much to her surprise she met Zeb Sabin, quite a 
character from the South part, who never attended 
meetings any too often. She said : " Mr. Sabin, what 
an excellent sermon we had this morning. Did you 
not like it?" He replied "Very much indeed, Mrs. 
Skinner, I always did like anything that had rum 
in it." 

In a former chapter I have spoken of Joshua Morey 
who lived at the South part. Joshua was a good 
Baptist and he used to invite old Elder Sweet of 
Stephentown to hold meetings and preach in his house 
Sunday afternoons. Occasionally Zeb and Hezekiah 
Sabin used to come over to Deacon Morey's to hear 
164 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the elder. One hot summer afternoon the elder 
preached a very long sermon. Towards the end of 
it he exclaimed: "Brothers and sisters, what more 
can I say?" To which Bill Skinner, who was present, 
shouted the reply : " Say Amen ! you old fool you." 
After the services were over and the audience had all 
dispersed except the elder and Zeb and Hezekiah, 
Joshua brought out some old cider brandy and asked 
the elder if he wouldn't take some. The elder replied 
" If I ever felt like taking a little it is after preaching 
such a sermon as I preached this afternoon." Joshua 
then asked Zeb if he wouldn't join them. "Waal" 
said Zeb " if I ever felt like taking a little, it is after 
listening to such a sermon as I heard this afternoon." 
One day the old village minister, Mr. Gridley, had 
been talking to Bill Skinner on the subject of religion. 
His remarks did not seem to have much effect, and 
as a final argument the good preacher exclaimed : 
" Mr. Skinner, when you get to hell there will be no 
preaching or praying there for you." To which Bill 
replied, quick as a wink "God! Mr. Gridley, it 
won't be for lack of ministers ! " 



CHAPTER XX. 

MAIN STREET — HOW THE FRESHMEN HOOKED GEESE 
— HOXSEY AND THE GUERILLAS — PRESIDENT 
GRIFFIN — THE COLLEGE IN THE FORTIES — "CHIP 
AND TREE DAYS" — STUDENTS THEN AND NOW — 
THE SOCIETY CLUB HOUSES. 

The Main Street in Williamstown was laid out 
sixteen rods wide, from the top of the hill near the 
Bingham house on the east, to the brow of the hill 
near Buxton Brook on the west, but many of the 
buildings intrude on the street. As the streets in 
the olden times were the poor man's pasture and 
were full of cows day and night, the property owners 
had to fence their places and keep their gates well 
secured. The cows in those days were our lawn 
mowers, and it was a great lark for the college boys 
now and then to collect the cows at night and drive 
them on Petersburg Mountain, and the next day the 
cows would come lowing back to their green pastures. 
One dark night some of the students secured a red 
cow and painted her in stripes black and white and 
the owner hunted for her up and down the street 
passing his cow many times without recognizing her. 
Finally the cow went home to her calf who knew her 
when the owner did not. Pigs rooted and grunted 
and geese flapped their wings on Main Street and all 
the freshmen had to do to obtain a goose was to 
1 66 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



throw a line out of old West College window with a 
good sized hook baited with corn and take one in. 
The West and East Colleges were fenced in and the 
yards were covered with tall grass which was sold to 
any one who needed hay and made application for it. 
In the summer of 1862, during the Civil War, 
Hoxsey purchased the grass which he cut and cured 
and tumbled up ready to take in the next morning, 
but during the night some of the college boys being 
anxious to know if the grass was dry touched a 
match to the hay and it disappeared in flames and 
smoke. Meeting Hoxsey shortly afterwards I asked 
him what he was doing. He said, "I have just 
been charging Dr. Hopkins up with two tons of hay 
burned by his damned guerillas." Some twenty 
years ago, the late Cyrus W. Field of New York 
presented the town with the sum of five thousand 
dollars, to be used in grading and beautifying the 
streets, on condition that all the fences in the village 
should be taken down. The fences were removed 
and the cattle were no longer permitted to roam 
about the streets and the village is now like a great 
park with its well-kept lawns and beautiful shade 
trees, with the beautiful college society houses and 
private dwellings with their ample grounds, and the 
handsome college buildings, many of which have 
been erected within the past few years. 

The writer's first recollections of the college go 
167 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



back to the time when Dr. Edward Griffin was presi- 
dent. Dr. Griffin was a very large man, over six 
feet in height. He usually took his exercise on 
horseback, and well do I remember his large black 
horse with a white stripe in the face. He used to 
ride up to the home of my boyhood and say, "Sonny, 
please open that gate so I can ride up to the top of 
the hill for a view." He was a very courtly man 
and insisted upon politeness from the students. 
When he met one on the street who did not meet 
his ideas on this subject, he would stop him and 
address him as his "Dear Pupil " and after making a 
very polite bow would pass on. I also remember 
Dr. Hopkins, in one of our class recitations senior 
year, asking one of the class what was the best way 
of breaking up disagreeable manners, whether by 
speaking to the person about the matter direct or by 
hints. To illustrate he told us of a call he made 
when a student on President Griffin, giving us a 
vivid picture of the president, with his large portly 
figure, his politeness and grace. He said he entered 
Dr. Griffin's room in a careless manner and when he 
came to take his leave the doctor drew himself up 
and made him a very polite and courtly bow. Dr. 
Hopkins said it was a hint to him that his manners 
when he entered did not meet the president's require- 
ments and that he ever afterwards remembered the 
gentle hint and endeavored to meet his wishes in that 
1 63 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



respect. In 1836 Dr. Griffin retired from the presi- 
dency of the college and Mark Hopkins, who had 
been a professor in the college for some years, was 
chosen to succeed him. In 1842 the writer's class 
entered under his instructions. Ebenezer Kellogg 
was professor of Latin and Greek at that time and 
was in feeble health, dying during our junior year. 
Albert Hopkins was professor of astronomy ; Joseph 
Alden, professor of elocution and political economy ; 
Edward Lasell, professor of chemistry, and John 
Tatlock, professor of mathematics. Tutor Coffin 
had the freshman class in mathematics and Latin. 
All of these men have now passed away, some dying 
with the harness on, others having retired before 
their death. In those days the students were older 
and seemed more manly than they do now. More 
came to college ; fewer were sent. The college 
requirements were quite severe and the students had 
to live up to them or suffer the consequences. Our 
gymnastic exercises in summer consisted in the care 
of the flower beds, one of which was allotted to every 
two of the students. The West College beds were 
located where Kellogg Hall now stands, and every 
Wednesday and Saturday afternoon the work was 
superintended by Professor Albert Hopkins. The 
East College beds were located where Jackson Hall 
now stands. In the winter we sawed our fire-wood 
and carried it to our rooms. 
169 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



The writer's room for two years was in the fourth 
story of West College and carrying the wood up 
proved pretty good exercise. Besides I had to walk 
six miles a day going and coming from my home to 
my room in the college. Our recreation days were 
two during the year, one in the spring called " chip 
day," when we raked up the chips and cleaned the 
college grounds ; those who did not wish to labor, 
paying small fines with which the chip committee 
hired the teams to cart away the chips. The other 
day was called "tree day," when we set out trees. 
Most of the trees about the college grounds and up 
and down the Main Street were set out by the 
students under the supervision of Professor Hopkins. 
Another day was called "gravel day," when we 
gravelled the walks, and the fines for those who did 
not work payed for the teams. 

The first old countrymen I remember working 
around the college were Dick Lama and James 
Melville. Dick was quite a character. When full 
he would prance up and down like a horse, go back- 
wards, then gather himself up and go ahead with a 
whoop. He built the house on Shattuck Lane where 
Thomas Nevell now lives. Melville was a shrewd 
Irishman and abounded in mother wit. A group of 
the students was gathered about him one day when 
some one said, "Jimmy, where do you think you'll 
go when you die?" "Oh," said Jimmy, " if I 
170 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



don't mend my ways I s'pose I'll go to the bad 
place." "Well, Jimmy, what do you suppose you'll 
be doing there?" "Oh, just waiting on the 
students, same as here." 

In those days the students when on the streets 
were neatly if not elegantly dressed, and were polite. 
They did not wear sweaters, with a cap on the back 
of their heads, their hair over their eyes like a poodle 
dog, and a pipe a foot long in their mouths. The 
professors were few in number and we knew them 
and they knew us. Some one of the professors had 
a room in each of the college buildings. Our study 
hours. in the evening were from seven till nine o'clock, 
during which time we were required to be in our 
rooms. Then we had one hour for visiting, and after 
ten o'clock our lights had to be out and we were 
supposed to have retired. Games of cards were not 
allowed in the college rooms. President Hopkins 
visited our rooms as often as once a term, and the 
professors came oftener, to see if we were in our 
rooms or if we had lounging visitors, and if they 
found such they politely requested them to retire to 
their rooms. The secret societies did not have any 
club houses. The first club house was built by the 
Sigma Phis — the little brick house on Spring Street 
adjoining the school-house, which was their club 
house for some years. Before this they had their 
lodge room in the upper part of the Union House 

171 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



when kept by Uncle Jerry Hosford. The Kappa 
Alpha society had their lodge room in the upper part 
of James Meacham's house on Water Street, and 
some of the old members will remember the good 
suppers Mrs. Meacham used to get up for them, and 
Mary Nichols' root beer. The Chi Psis had their 
lodge at one time in the old Mansion House. The 
Delta Psis held their meetings for several years in 
the upper room of the wagon shop standing on the 
bank of Hemlock Brook at the foot of Buxton Hill. 
The Alpha Delta Phi society had their meetings in 
the upper rooms of the old Academy building over 
the writer's office. All of these societies now have 
beautiful club houses on Main Street. The Delta 
Kappa Epsilon society house was injured by fire 
two years ago and the society will in the near future 
build a fine lodge on the site on Main Street. The 
old anti-secret society, the " D. U.," from which the 
other societies used to steal some of their most valued 
members, has reorganized within the last few years 
and now owns and occupies the fine old Dewey 
house, which in the olden times was occupied by 
three generations of the noted Dewey family. 

Dr. Hopkins was president of the college up to 
1872 when he resigned the presidency but continued 
his instructions to the classes up to the time of his 
death. He was succeeded by Paul A. Chadbourne, 
who resigned in 1882 and was succeeded by Franklin 
172 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



Carter, who with his energy and tact has succeeded 
in raising funds sufficient to put the college on a 
sound financial basis. The students have doubled in 
numbers and the college has a large and efficient 
corps of professors. Those of the graduates who 
have not visited their Alma Mater for twenty years 
or more will feel like Rip Van Winkle after his 
twenty years' sleep on returning to his old home. 
Williams College still stands on its hills, more in- 
viting than ever to young men who may come to fit 
themselves for life's battles. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE NEW STREETS AND WHEN THEY WERE OPENED 
— MISSION PARK AND THE HAYSTACK MONUMENT 
— THE NEW SUMMER RESIDENCES — MOUNT 
PLEASANT — THE RECENT COLLEGE BUILDINGS — 
HOW THE COLLEGE TREASURER USED TO KEEP 
THE FUNDS. 

The inhabitants of the village found plenty of room 
to build and locate on Main Street and the old side 
streets up to 1847, when Spring Street was opened 
by S. V. R. Hoxsey. Fred and Edwin Sanderson, 
Blakeslee and George Roberts erected dwellings on 
it in that year. The next year Charles Spooner, 
William A. Morey and others built on this street, 
which has now become the principal business street 
of the village, having three large brick buildings and 
the high school located there, also the post office, 
banks, police court, drug store, and all the law 
offices. 

Park Street was opened in 1854, when Professor P. 
A. Chadbourne commenced to erect a dwelling there. 
Owing to a death in his family, however, he sold the 
house unfinished to Professor John Bascom, who 
finished it and who owns and occupies it at the 
present time. On the opposite side of the street, the 
land where Mission Park now stands was purchased 

174 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



and laid out by friends of the college. It is now a 
beautiful park, adorned with many beautiful trees. 
Within a circle of evergreens stands a monument 
erected to commemorate the birthplace of foreign 
missions, and to perpetuate the names of the six 
young students in Williams College who in 1806 met 
in that retired spot to pray for the establishment of a 
mission to heathen lands. A shower coming up at 
one of their meetings, they fled for protection to the 
shelter of a haystack standing near, and the monu- 
ment erected some years ago marks the spot where 
the haystack stood. The late Professor Tenney 
purchased a lot opposite the park and built a fine 
residence upon it, but lived only a few years to enjoy 
it, dying very suddenly in 1877, on his way to Chicago 
to meet a company of students whom he was to 
conduct on a scientific expedition to the Rocky 
Mountains. When this street was opened the writer's 
office was on the corner of Main Street, and he 
frequently resorted to a vacant lot on the other side 
of the street, from which there was a beautiful view. 
He admired the spot so much that he afterwards 
purchased one-and-a-half acres there, where the 
dwellings of his son Bushnell and N. F. Smith now 
stand, with the intention of erecting a house there 
for himself. But the old Buxton home, with all the 
childhood memories clustering around it, proved too 
strong a tie for him to sever, and he sold the lot to 

175 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



the Delta Psi fraternity, and they erected there their 
first club-house. Many years afterwards, when the 
society purchased the old Benjamin lot for the erec- 
tion of their new club house, they sold their old 
house to Bushnell Danforth, and the spot which the 
father selected for his home has, after many years, 
become the home of his son. 

When the street was first opened the first Congre- 
gational parish purchased a quarter of an acre and 
built a chapel on it which is now occupied by the 
Episcopalians who are about to build a fine stone 
church upon the site. In i860, Dr. S. Duncan 
erected a house on this street north of the chapel. 
This house was afterwards purchased by the college 
and is now occupied by Professor Burr. 

The next street opened was Hoxsey Street, which 
is now lined on both sides by fine houses. A few 
years ago Mrs. Southworth opened an avenue in the 
lower part of the village on the land her husband 
purchased of the Dewey estate, and this is now 
built up with fine dwellings. Another new street 
has lately been surveyed and is to be opened this 
summer from Park Street east to Depot Street cross- 
ing the north end of Southworth Avenue. 

When the railroad station was located on the banks 

of the Hoosac, the thoroughfare known as Shattuck 

Lane which led to the station from Main Street was 

widened and given the name of Depot Street, but 

176 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



two years ago the committee appointed to name the 
Williamstown streets and roads gave this street the 
name of Cole Avenue. In 1864 a large cotton mill 
was erected on the banks of the Hoosac, opposite the 
station, and the yards of the Fitchburg Railroad 
having recently been located in that vicinity, a large 
hamlet has of late years sprung up on both sides of 
the river. 

Within the last few years many handsome summer 
homes have been built on the hills south and west of 
the village. E. Courtland Gale and James M. Ide 
have located their fine houses south of the village, on 
an eminence commanding beautiful views on all sides. 
Samuel Blagden and W. E. Hoyt have built their 
residences on high ground west of the village. Proba- 
bly the finest site of all however is that selected by 
Van Dyke Brown, of New York, who will build a 
handsome residence on Buxton Hill at a point which 
commands a view of the entire valley. Doctor Ed- 
ward Griffin, the old president of the college, used 
to ride to this spot on his black horse for the purpose 
of enjoying the view and pronounced it the finest 
one to be obtained from any point in the town. 
He named it Mount Pleasant. 

The college buildings have also multiplied in 
numbers and increased in beauty of architecture. 
The handsomest of all is the new Hopkins Me- 
morial. In this is located the office of the treasurer 

177 



Boyhood Reminiscences. 



of the college, with a vault in which to keep the 
college records and the surplus funds on hand. In 
old times, and indeed in times not so very old, if the 
treasurer of the college had any money left over after 
paying the bills, not daring to leave it in the old 
college safe, he would have to take it to his house 
and secrete it in some outlandish spot where a burglar 
would not think of looking for it. There being no 
bank in the village, he would have to drive several 
times a week to North Adams to the bank to deposit 
checks and draw money. Now we have a bank in 
the village with a fine safe deposit vault with boxes 
for rent. The Lasell Gymnasium, Morgan Hall, 
built by the late Governor Morgan, and the new 
Chemical Laboratories, the gifts of trustee Frederick 
Thompson, of New York city, are all useful build- 
ings and ornaments to the college grounds. 

If some of the students who went out from the 
college many years ago should come back now and 
visit the town and take in the beauties of the new 
college buildings, the fine summer residences in the 
village and throughout the surrounding country, they 
would find but few of the old landmarks and would 
hardly believe that they ever passed four years of 
college life in this spot. 



The End. 



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